Zack's Penny
by Be Boring
Summary: Final Chapter up. She was Zack's greatest secret, even the others never knew about her freedom. Now, after he's gone, she has no choice but to come out and try to avoid the others. Unfortunately, that doesn't work out so well. Ch6 rated R.
1. Prologue Part 1: Penny

Disclaimer: Does anyone really have to do this anymore? We all know the drill.

Setting: This happens sometime between "Blah Blah Woof Woof" and "The Kidz Are Aiight".

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Zack's Penny

by Be Boring

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Prologue Part 1: Penny

He never meant to hurt me, I know that. He was just overprotective. Okay, maybe he was a _little_ more than overprotective, but that never bothered me before. In fact, I was comforted by it. There were many things the others didn't know about him: he was kind and sensitive, he actually had feelings no matter how hard he tried to hide them, and he loved them more than anything else in the world. 

I was a secret, something that could never be seen by the eyes of the others. They would never have understood, he knew that. They were always curious about his life, particularly what he did when he wasn't watching over one of them. They probably thought he trained on his own or something stupid like that. They would never have guessed that he was with me, being just another ordinary brother.

Is there such a thing as loving too much? If there is, it was meant for him. He was the only one who ever loved me. For some reason the others avoided me like the plague. Perhaps it was because I was weaker than the others, a mistake. It also could have been that Lydecker babied me. I was the only one who never hated him simply because he never hurt me. Although Lydecker cared, it was Zack who loved me. Whenever the barracks were dark and the other X5s were sound asleep, he would come and lay by me. He knew that I cried myself to sleep out of sheer loneliness. He knew that I longed to be accepted by the others. He even knew that I snuck up to the High Place on occasions to train on my own. I wanted to be stronger, not the meek weakling I was, or still am for that matter.

When the others escaped, I thought I would die of pain. Not the physical pain either, but something deeper. I had never felt that before, so I actually thought for a short time that I truly _was_ dying. It wasn't so much the others that I was upset about, it was Zack. I couldn't believe he could leave me. After all the times he had told me I was special and he loved me, how could he just run off with the others and leave me there? I know it's selfish, but at Manticore we weren't exactly taught to care about each other.

When I saw them drag Zack back into the unhappy place of our childhood, I didn't know whether to be overjoyed or sorry for him. I was glad he was back there with me, but I also knew how badly he wanted to be free. Was it wrong of me to want him back even though he didn't want to be there? Now that I know better I think so, but back then I was just relieved that I wouldn't spend the rest of my life alone.

They kept him in isolation for nearly a month until it got to the point where I snuck to his room to see if he was even still alive. After sitting outside the room for nearly an hour, I finally heard movement inside. That satisfied me, he was still alive in there. I didn't find out until later that it hadn't been him in the room, it had been the guard he'd knocked out that was just coming back to consciousness. 

Having Zack appear out of the dark at my bedside a week later was almost more than I could handle. He had to grab me and put a hand over my mouth to keep me from screaming out loud in shock. The remaining X5s were sound asleep in their beds, Lydecker had worked us so hard that it was all we could do to keep from collapsing onto our beds. He hadn't even been easy on me. Now I think that our escape loosened something in his mind.

Zack carried me down the hallway, not trusting me to walk on my own. I was too scared and surprised to help him out, so he was pretty much carrying my dead weight around. To this day I don't know how he managed to get us out of there, the entire time is practically a blank for me. All I remember happening next is waking up in a hotel bedroom and finding Zack asleep in the chair next to my bed. The next morning he told me I was free and that we had to hide, because if Lydecker got a hold of us we wouldn't be free anymore. 

That's still what I'm doing today, but it's without him. I've been alone for a long time now, but it's time to come out of hiding. Zack wanted to keep me secret, but he's not here to do that anymore. I guess I'll have to take care of myself from here on out.

It's been a couple weeks since I last saw him, which is the longest stretch of time I've ever gone without him. He dragged me around from place to place, keeping me hidden while he went to see one of the other X5s. The strange thing is I know everything there is to know about them, but they probably haven't even thought of me in the last nine years. True, I don't know what they look like, Zack made damned sure of that. The only thing I know is how they've been living their lives. I don't even know where they are, but Zack has told me all about their personalities and how much trouble some of them get into. The worst ones are Krit and Syl. Apparently they're dating, but Zack never approved of that. It made him sick to his stomach to think of any of his siblings being together that way. The only thing worse than their togetherness was their strange ability to get into the worst kinds of trouble.

Zack had nearly killed himself on one of his IRMs, otherwise known as Idiot Rescue Missions. That's what he called it whenever he had to go get Krit and Syl's asses out of trouble. On that particular lovely occasion, Krit had been trying to steal some money from the local drug lords. Simple for an X5, right? Wrong. Krit wound up being caught while trying to escape through an upstairs window. It was damn lucky for him that they didn't know what the barcode on the back of his neck meant, otherwise he would have been in even deeper trouble than before. After freeing his idiot brother, Zack had been shot five times running out the door. Those wounds hadn't been fun to take care of, believe me. Zack nearly took my head off whenever I accidentally hurt him while trying to stop the blood flow. It's not like I could have been gentle, I needed to jam my knee against his back to get the blood to stop.

It was Max that was his downfall. Every now and then I would ask him why he hadn't been checking in on her like he had been with all the others, but all I got was a grunt in reply. That's pretty strange coming from him, he usually told me everything. I guess Max was just a subject he was touchy on. I teased him when he first started checking in on her, I had suspected long ago how he felt about her. I used to think that it was harmless, that he just cared about her as more than a sister. I never thought it would cost him anything more than his heart.

When the first wanted posters came out about Max, Zack went crazy. I thought he was going to take our hotel room apart with the way he was carrying on. The only time things ever looked this bad was when I was in heat, but it was always me that caused the damage. Zack somehow managed to hold himself away from me at those times, so I ended up taking my frustration out on anything I could reach. It's almost funny to think that in my life I've had 21 heat cycles and somehow I'm still a virgin, Zack saw to that.

I tried to stop him, but he was dead set on going after Max and getting her out of trouble. He told me he wouldn't be gone long, just long enough to get her to safety. He left two weeks ago and I haven't seen him since. Until three days ago I thought it was just taking him awhile to convince Max to leave her home, but then I heard on the news about the helicopter crash. They showed a sketch of Zack, saying he was the confessed murderer who was being transported. I couldn't believe he had done something like that, how irresponsible could he be? This wasn't being selfish anymore, this was anger for what he was doing to all the others. I might be able to scratch out a life on my own, Lydecker hasn't heard so much as a peep from me in all his years of searching for us, which makes me the only one he hasn't been able to track down at least once.

I might be able to hide from the all-seeing eye of Manticore, but they certainly can't. What if Zack is still alive and will somehow be tortured to the point where he gives up information on them? He can't really give anything out about me, he had told me to find my own hiding place before he left, so even he didn't know where I was. The others, on the other hand, are subject to exposure. I guess they'll just have to run as best as they can, but the problem is they don't even know the danger they're in. It's normal for Zack not to contact them for weeks on end, so at the moment they probably think they're snug as a bug in a rug. They'll never know how wrong they are. They'll never know who I am either, I'll make sure of that.

I can't imagine how they'd react if they saw me. They probably wouldn't even recognize me, not that it would be a bad thing. What reason would they have to remember poor, little Penny? I don't think Zack knew the irony of the name he gave me when he actually gave it to me. At the time it was just a word that he thought was pretty, but now it fits me better than ever. That's about how important I am, as big a deal as a penny. Annoying too. They probably felt about me then like they feel about having all those extra pennies in their pockets today, completely useless. I can't say I disagree, I can hardly take care of myself.

I've been hiding out in this old warehouse for the entire time I've been without Zack. I guess a part of me is hoping he made it and will come back, just as if nothing ever happened. The more rational side of me knows that isn't true. I can't stay here forever, he's not going to come back and get my life going again. Sometime or another I'm going to have to go out there on my own and start a life of my own, without Zack there to help me. I guess now is as good a time as any. Staring out into the pouring rain outside, I pulled my hood up to cover my head and walked out to meet whatever lay ahead.

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Author's Note: So, is this even worth continuing? I'll be pretty busy, so I'm not sure how quickly I'll be able to update each time. Of course, if people seem to be interested then I might hurry it up a bit just because I'll be happy.


	2. Prologue Part 2: Zane

Disclaimer: I think we all got it.

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Zack's Penny

by Be Boring

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Prologue Part 2: Zane

I've never laughed so hard in my life. I guess most other people would be thinking of this as a serious situation, but I've known Krit and Syl too long to treat it as such. I was sitting there on the roof of an apartment building, laughing my ass off at Krit as he hung from a window on the next building. King of Grace, he calls himself. According to him, he's a great acrobat. I guess technically he's pretty good, but compared to other X5s he's seriously lacking that particular talent.

Syl hit me over the back of the head in disgust. She hates it when I laugh about things like this. What does she expect me to do when my brother looks like some sort of drunk, swaying crazily ten stories over the ground? This is how things usually go, Krit does something stupid and Syl is forced to either save him herself or call Zack. In this case she called me because she couldn't reach our beloved bloodhound. 

I haven't seen these two in nearly five years, but Syl has a strange talent of persuading people do what she wants. In this case it was convincing Zack to let her know my phone number. She also has Tinga's, which she has taken advantage of several times so she could see Case. That girl is crazy about kids, in fact, she's just plain crazy. She can be hysterical at times, then turn into a mother hen protecting those around her. I always laugh when I think of her saving Krit's ass countless times, she's so much shorter than him that you would think things would be the other way around. Of course, nothing is usual when it comes to those two.

Syl grabbed the front of her harness and gave a hard tug at the rope. It nearly slipped through my fingers because of the rain, but at least it didn't break off the harness. I rubbed my hands quickly on my pants to dry them, I didn't want my sister to slip through my fingers when her life depended on me. Her plan was to jump out to Krit, then grab him and I would pull them both up. Of course, if she didn't make it at least I had her. She ran her fingers back through her light blonde hair, took a deep breath, then backed up to give herself a running start. I chuckled to myself as she shouted out to Krit while preparing herself to run towards the edge of the roof.

"I hate you, you know that? My shoulder is still sore from the last time I had to get you out of deep shit, and now you expect me to catch myself over there, grab you, and hold onto you while Zane pulls us up?" At this point she started running towards the edge. "I just know I'm going to feel this in the MOOOOORRRNNNIIIIINNNNGGGGGG!!!" Her last word stretched out into a scream, but it wasn't exactly a scream of terror. I know my sister too well for that. No matter how much she's complaining, she's getting a huge thrill out of this.

"OOF!!" came her startled noise as she hit the opposite building. Krit rolled his eyes at her.

"Took you long enough!"

"At least I came!"

He rolled his eyes again as he grasped her hands and clung to her, wrapping his legs around her so she didn't have to do all the work of holding onto him while I was pulling them back up. As they dropped away from the other building and their full weight came to the mercy of the rope, it nearly slipped through my fingers again. I braced my feet against the ground and tightened my grip, praying silently the entire time. I don't know who exactly I pray to since I don't believe in the Blue Lady anymore and I don't know much about God, but I pray nevertheless. I only do it when I'm in a situation like this, but I seem to be in a lot of these. It's usually Brin or Jondy I'm saving, but I haven't talked to either of them in a while. Brin just hasn't been answering my calls for the past couple months, and Jondy moved somewhere and Zack refused to tell me where.

"What's taking so long?" Krit shouted up to me. 

"You two aren't exactly lightweights!"

"I told you to lose some weight," I heard Krit hiss at Syl. A loud _whack_ let me know what she thought of that. I don't see how she could get lighter, she only weighs 112 pounds. At least, that's what I guessed from holding the rope before she got Krit. The equipment might have added some weight.

I couldn't have been more relieved when I saw Syl's head pop up over the edge of the roof, then Krit's right behind it. It was a relief to see them, I was thoroughly exhausted. It's not easy to pull approximately three hundred pounds up a couple stories, not even for genetically enhanced individuals like myself. Krit noticed the sweat running down my face, although it would have been impossible for a normal person to distinguish it from the rain pouring on my head.

My face twisted into a disgusted scowl as Krit picked up Syl and kissed her. As much as I like them, I don't like to see them kissing. The last time I saw them they had just been starting a relationship, but now it was obviously a lot more serious. Despite being a lot more easygoing about my family relations, I still agree with Zack that it's disgusting for us to date each other. Whether we're related or not, we've grown up thinking of each other as family and for me that feeling still holds true. I'm not saying I've never thought of my sisters in a sexual way, what breathing male wouldn't? Every last one of them is drop dead gorgeous. I've thought more than once about running my fingers through Tinga's hair, or kissing those full, beautiful lips of Jondy's, but that doesn't mean I'm going to do it. They're my family and that's that for me.

Syl laughed when she saw my face. "Come downstairs, little brother. We'll have to feed you for your help."

At the mention of food, my mood picked right back up. I've never been able to hold a girlfriend long because of my tendency to eat them out of house and home. Of course, as Jondy often told me it wasn't for lack of looks. According to her, I'm one of the best looking men gracing the face of this planet. I don't know if I believe that. Still, I do seem to get a lot of female heads turned in my direction when I'm walking through a room. Also, women don't seem to like my dog. Keisha just seems to put people on edge, but I happen to think she's sweet. Of course, that's because she likes me and all the other X5s she meets along the way. Normal people, including girlfriends I've brought home, have been forced to run out of my apartment screaming. It's a big apartment for just one person, so it takes them a while to reach the door. By then Keisha usually has managed to get in at least one good bite.

Well, Syl sure as hell can cook. Even though it was just heating up some leftovers, those leftovers were damn good. It's not take out either, she actually cooked it herself. Turkey, stuffing, potatoes, corn; I felt like I'd been invited to the grandmother of all Thanksgiving dinners. Syl's face blushed furiously red when I told her so.

Some noises outside seemed to catch Krit's attention. He strode over to the window and poked his head out, then pulled his head back in and chuckled. "There's a ton of people down there who got caught in the rain and want to be let in, but the watchman isn't letting them."

Syl walked over to join him. I could already see the mother hen blossoming from where I sat. "Oh, those poor people! It's freezing out there, why isn't Jake letting them in?"

"Because he doesn't want this place overrun with hobos?" Krit suggested.

She slapped him upside the head. "I'm going down there to let them in."

Krit gave me a look that said all too clearly _'Do you see what I have to put up with?'_ , then he walked after her. I set down my fork and went for the door. I may as well go down and get my dog, she's been waiting patiently in the car this whole time. I get the feeling we'll be staying here for a while.

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A/N: Since I got more feedback from the first chapter than I've ever gotten, I hurried up on this one for everyone. Please review!


	3. The Unknown Reunion

Disclaimer: Don't own a thing. 

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Zack's Penny

Be Boring

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Chapter 1: The Unknown Reunion

~*~Zane

The first floor was nearly filled with people by the time I got down there. Pushing my way through them, I made my way outside. It's warmer down here than it was on the roof, but it's cold all the same. I passed Syl ushering some people inside while Krit stood behind her and rubbed his temples. It looked like the poor guy was going to blow his top soon if this didn't stop.

Keisha barked eagerly as I reached the door. I hugged her and kissed the top of her head, then stepped back and let her out. She didn't need a leash, she would walk next to me with no problems. She growled threateningly at several people as we passed, but as long as I was next to her she didn't attack. Krit's eyes nearly popped out of his head as he looked down at her. Despite the fact that she was wagging her tail at him, he still didn't seem to like her.

"Did you have to bring that thing inside? Is she going to be staying in our apartment?"

"Only for a little while, at least until I find a place of my own around here."

That pulled Syl's attention away from the swarm of people she was guiding inside. "So you plan to stick around?" I've never seen her look so excited.

"Well, at least until Zack finds out and sends me away."

She jumped forward and wrapped her arms around me, pressing her cheek against my chest. "We'll just have to keep you secret, little brother. Maybe Zack won't find out about you at all."

I was about to say how unlikely that was when Keisha ran off through the crowd, barking and wagging her tail. I pushed Syl away and ran after her, shoving past several startled looking people. I just hoped she didn't hurt anyone. It wasn't like she hadn't done it before. 

She finally came to a stop next to someone sitting in the corner. To my surprise, she was wagging her tail when I reached her. I curiously studied the person she had run to. I was guessing it was a girl, but her hood was up so I couldn't tell. The only thing I had to go on was her tiny stature, she was even smaller than Syl. I reached out and tapped her on the shoulder gently. She didn't even look up, but I knew she was paying attention.

"Sorry if my dog scared you, she gets excited sometimes."

"That's okay." The voice that floated out form under the hood was definitely female, it was too soft not to be. It sounded like she wasn't used to talking to people, she sounded a bit nervous to me. 

Keisha jumped up and put her paws on the girl's lap, then started licking her face under the hood. I've never seen her act this way around anyone but me. "What's your name?"

There was silence for a moment, then she said "Penny." I almost didn't hear it, she was still speaking so softly. I thought for a moment about a fake name to give her. I don't know why I bothered, but I had the strongest feeling that I had to stick around.

"I'm Jesse," I said after a moment of deliberation. "Are you sure you're alright?"

She shrugged, which I could barely see through the thick coat she was wearing. "I'm just cold."

Cold? In that coat? It had to feel like the Amazon Rain Forest in that thing! "I'll let Keisha sit by you for a while then." I turned and walked away, feeling a little hurt that Keisha didn't need me to tell her to stay, she apparently already planned on doing that. 

Krit saw the look on my face as I approached. "What's up with you? Did someone kill your dog? Wait a second, let me rephrase that. Did your dog kill someone?"

I couldn't even smile at that, the girl had thrown me off balance somehow. "No, no one is dead. You might want to think of a good fake name though, it looks like Keisha found someone interesting."

"Interesting how?"

"You know, I honestly couldn't tell you. It's just a feeling I got when I came near her. So, what's your name?"

"Miguel," he said without any hesitation. At the raised eyebrows on my face, he grinned. "I've used it before. I don't know, I guess I like it."

"What'll Syl call herself?"

"Cindy. It's her favorite fake name. Don't ask me why, that girl is just strange."

"Not compared to the one I found. Where's Syl now? She might want to meet her."

Krit pointed through the crowd to where Syl was sitting by a group of little kids. I should have guessed she would naturally migrate towards the little people. Being careful not to startle the kids, I leaned over them to tap Syl on the shoulder and get her attention. 

"I think there's someone you might want to meet."

She stood up and moved away from the kids. "Why would you want me to meet them?"

"I don't know, you're good at these things. Besides, I don't know what to do about her."

"Why would you feel the need to do anything at all?"

"_I don't know!_" I snapped in frustration. I was upset partly because she kept asking questions, and partly because I didn't know how to answer that last one. 

She almost took a step back from my anger, but then she nodded. "Alright, where is this person?"

She followed me all the way to the hallway where I found Keisha and the girl, informing her along the way that she had to call me Jesse. They were sitting in the back corner of the hallway, just like before. I couldn't believe Keisha was still by her. Syl crouched down next to the girl.

"Hi. Who are you?"

"Penny," came the same soft, dull voice. Her voice seemed to have struck a chord in Syl too, judging by the look on her face.

"Well Penny, what were you doing outside tonight?"

"Looking for a place to stay."

"Why?"

"I lived with my brother, but he's gone. Now I have to find my own place."

Syl hesitated, then reached up and pulled back Penny's hood. She got no reaction out of Penny, but the sight of her surprised us. She was absolutely beautiful, there was no other word to describe it. She had shiny, sand-colored hair that fell in gentle curls to her shoulders. Large green eyes were set in a perfect face that reminded me oddly of a porcelain doll. She was very pale, but that didn't take away anything from her appearance. If anything, it improved it. Every part of her was tiny and perfect, from her pouty little lips to her tiny, delicate hands to her slim waist. She had a figure most women would die for. Even though her breasts weren't particularly large, they fit her body perfectly and set off her curves. She was so stunning that even Syl seemed to lose her breath for a moment.

"Is something wrong?" Penny finally seemed to have noticed how we were looking at her. Syl was the first one to recover, I still couldn't get over what I was seeing.

"No, nothing's wrong. Where are you from?"

Penny didn't seem to know how to answer that. "My brother and I traveled a lot. I just came to Chicago because it seemed as good a place as any."

Syl gave a wry smile. "We came to Chicago to escape from someone who wouldn't want us together. He hasn't figured it out yet."

Penny offered a tiny smile, which caught me completely off guard again. She looked even more beautiful when she smiled. Her green eyes twinkled, making her look much happier. It was rather obvious she liked Syl, she hadn't treated me with nearly as much kindness. Syl just has a way with people like that. Most of the time it wouldn't bother me, but I feel different about this girl. Something about her draws me to her, but for the life of me I couldn't tell you why. I'm not a guy who goes for a challenging relationship, so it's not her shyness that's getting to me. No, it's the feeling I get when I come near her. It's like the world just got simpler somehow, but I can't explain how. Damn, this is confusing. 

"So, you don't have a place to stay yet?" Syl asked finally. Penny shook her head sadly.

"No, I couldn't even tell you where I am. I just tagged along with the first group of people I came to, hoping they would find a way to get out of the rain."

Syl frowned sympathetically. "You poor thing, you must be freezing!"

Penny just shrugged. "My coat's warm, I'm okay."

Hey, hold the phones. Didn't she just tell me five minutes ago that she was cold? Who did she tell the truth to? I felt even more hurt than before, she had probably been lying to me to get me to go away. What's up with this girl?

*~* Penny

I've never been so uncomfortable. This woman next to me just won't stop interrogating me, the guy standing behind her keeps staring at me, and this dog that keeps putting her front paws in my lap won't stop licking my face. I'm not used to either people or dogs, so this is a whole new situation for me. It's the guy that's really making me nervous. He's really tall, probably about 6'3", which makes him over a foot taller than me. I barely reach 5 foot. He's also extremely handsome, with sharp green eyes and brown hair that's the exact color of chocolate. I saw him smile earlier before he noticed me and saw that he had dimples. His looks caught me so off guard that I feel extremely self-conscious with him staring at me.

"If it makes you feel any better, I'm Cindy," said the woman next to me. She seemed to have guessed how I feel. I guess she's not too bad, but that guy watching me is giving me the creeps. She followed my gaze and smiled. "That's Jesse, he's an old friend of mine."

"We already met," I said softly. I had almost forgotten that he'd given me his name earlier, but I had been so nervous that I hardly heard a word he was saying. 

"Now," Cindy continued, "about a place to stay. If you want you can stay with me. My boyfriend can go live with my friend here."

I couldn't help but be taken completely by surprise. I'm a total stranger, yet she's kicking her boyfriend out so I can stay with her? "Are you sure about that? Why would you do that?"

For a moment, Cindy didn't seem to know how to answer. "I don't know, I guess I just have a special feeling about you." Her face changed into a beautiful smile. "Besides, do you really want to turn down my kind offer?"

I still didn't know what to say. This was pretty weird, no normal person just lets a stranger into their house to stay. I know I don't exactly have a charm with people, so it can't be my personality. For a second I wondered if she was bisexual, but the appreciative look she gave a tall, dark man walking towards us pushed that thought from my mind completely.

Jesse seemed relieved for the guy to show up. "Hey Miguel, meet Cindy's new friend, Penny."

Miguel's eyes settled on me and I couldn't help but blush under his gaze. He seemed to like what he was seeing and showed it much more than Jesse, but then Cindy stood up and hit him in the arm. "You're only supposed to look at me like that!" I realized he must be her boyfriend. Now I really think she's nuts. Kicking that guy out for me? She needs therapy.

"Don't worry, I'll remember it from now on," he teased Cindy, and they kissed lovingly. I thought it was kind of sweet, but I saw Jesse grimace a little. Did he like Cindy or something? He didn't seem to be jealous, just disgusted by what he was seeing. After a little while he noticed that I was staring at him and he took his eyes away from them. It was a little longer before Cindy and Miguel stopped kissing. When they looked over and saw us staring, they both turned a deep shade of crimson.

"Sorry about that," Miguel managed to choke out finally after almost a minute of uncomfortable silence. I could tell he was extremely embarrassed, maybe he wasn't the kind of player I had first imagined him to be. He certainly looked like one and could get away with being one with those looks. Tall, dark Latin men certainly are able to take any girl's breath away.

Cindy finally spoke, wiping off the smeared lipstick from her mouth. "Jesse, why don't you take Penny up to the apartment? You need to feed and water your dog anyway."

Jesse nodded and stepped forward to pat his dog on the back. Immediately Keisha pulled away from me and turned to look up at him. It was hard to believe he had that much control over her, but he apparently did. He looked down at me for a second, as if deciding what to do, then reached down and offered me his hand. I felt a little nervous, but I reached up and took it anyway. 

When he pulled me to my feet, he accidentally pulled too hard and brought me crashing against him. It didn't take him long to step back, blushing furiously, then he mumbled an embarrassed "Sorry" and gestured for me to follow him. We went up several flights of stairs, until I guessed we were on the seventh floor. The door he opened revealed a decent sized apartment that had been very well decorated. Cindy had apparently put her heart into this, if it weren't for the slight draft that I could feel, this would have seemed to be a first-class apartment. There were about five paintings on the wall, a very fancy-looking ceiling fan in the kitchen (which was pretty big considering it was in a apartment), and furniture that appeared to be made out of mahogany wood. I couldn't help but be a little impressed.

"Why did you look so mad when Cindy and Miguel kissed?" I asked a little nervously. I have always hated starting conversations with people I don't know, but my curiosity was killing me.

He looked a little surprised by the question, he didn't seem to have expected to be asked that. It took him a moment to answer. "She's my sister, so I guess I'm a little protective."

That sounded reasonable enough to me, after all, Zack had been extremely protective of me. They even looked somewhat alike, but not much. If he hadn't said anything, I wouldn't have known they were related. I decided to be bold and voice the other question bothering me, maybe he would be able to answer it. 

"Why would Cindy throw out her boyfriend so I can live with her?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. By nature, Cindy's a generous person, but this is a little more than we usually get from her. I couldn't honestly tell you why she's doing this. Maybe she snapped or something, I don't know." At my raised eyebrow, he laughed, making himself look even more handsome than before, if that was possible. "Don't worry, I was just kidding. If she hasn't snapped by now, she never will!"

He pointed into one of the rooms on the other side of the living room. "That'll probably be your room, I know Cindy's bedroom is right over there." My eyes followed the direction of his pointing finger, then came back to him. 

"Does she have anything to eat? I haven't had any food since yesterday."

Jesse looked a little alarmed at this. "You haven't eaten in over 24 hours? Why not?"

"I ran out of my food and I didn't have any money left."

He hurried to the refrigerator and pulled out what looked like the leftovers of a Thanksgiving meal. After popping it in the microwave, he filled up a bowl of water for his dog. I sat down at the kitchen table and watched as he hurried around, getting stuff for me and for the huge German Shepherd. Right after he had set the plate down in front of me, he said," I should probably go down and help Cindy and Miguel. Do you mind if I leave Keisha up here with you?" He motioned toward the dog. I shook my head, the dog seemed to like me so it wasn't like I was in danger or anything. Nodding in satisfaction, Jesse walked out the door. 

I was basically stunned as I started eating. This was all so strange, I still didn't understand why Cindy would do something like this for me. In this day and age, you had to be careful about the people you invited into your home. I ate my meal in confused silence, wondering if I was really safe or not. For one thing, Jesse had said he and Cindy were brother and sister, but earlier Cindy had said Jesse was an old friend. Why did they have two different stories? They hadn't seen my barcode, I was sure of that. I guess I'll just have to figure it all out while I'm here.

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A/N: Sorry that this took a while, I was having major writer's block! As always, read and review!


	4. Attachments

Disclaimer: Penny is mine, the rest aren't.

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Zack's Penny

By Be Boring

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Chapter 2: Attachments

*~* Penny

This has certainly been one of the most interesting times of my life. I've been living with Cindy for about a month now, and there hasn't been an end to the excitement. She and Miguel must have led a very strange lifestyle, to say the least. Cindy wakes up early in the morning, and when I say early, I mean _early_! I usually wake up at about six, which is early enough as it is, but she gets up at _four_! Not only is she up and ready to go, but she goes rattling around doing things around the apartment so that there's no chance for me to get back to sleep. You would think that Miguel would have objected to this when they were living together, but, from the way she carries on as though she's not aware I'm there, I'm led to believe that he got up with her at this time and did the stuff with her. 

Cindy seems to be a bit of a clean freak; she cooks, she cleans, she scrubs, she scours, and she practically strips the linoleum right off the floor when she's washing it! To be honest, I feel nervous walking around because I'm afraid I'll leave a speck of dust somewhere! Jesse and Miguel pay no attention to this whenever they come over, they storm right in with their filthy shoes on and put their feet on the furniture while they sit. I swear the only thing that holds her back from hitting them is the fact that I'm there. I hate to think of what she did to them before I came here. 

Life has a very strange habit of sticking to a strict schedule around here. Cindy gets up at four and does her stuff, I get up at six even though I've already been awake for two hours and make breakfast for myself and Cindy (I was just used to doing this with Zack since I don't think he ever knew what a frying pan was, and I figured it was the least I could do for her), Jesse and Miguel show up at about seven, Jesse and I sit around and try to keep our eyes on the television as Cindy and Miguel make out, everyone except for me goes to work, then they all go to a club after work. They've taken me a couple times, but the looks I was getting from guys completely turned me off to the idea of going there again. 

There's one thing the club has made me see: Jesse and Miguel have already accepted me. I've seen how protective they are of Cindy, and it seems they feel the same way about me too. The last time I was at the club, some jackass walked right up behind me and groped me! I know that kind of thing happens a lot nowadays, but Zack kept me under such a close watch that this was the first time I'd ever really been exposed to it. It was a good thing Miguel saw the guy and reacted before my instincts could kick in, otherwise he would have seen quite a show. I know I'm not up to par with the rest of the X5s, but I'm still pretty strong in my own right. Your average man wouldn't be able to stand up to me, and even someone more professional like a boxer would have a hard time with me. I've been known to leave one hell of a shiner when I'm left to defend myself. 

I did have to appreciate how strong Miguel was, though. The punch he threw sent the man flying over the bar and into the bartender. Apparently the bartender is used to this kind of thing with Miguel around because he didn't seem too upset. Then he handed me off to Jesse so he could take the man out into the alley. It seems that these people take things literally. Miguel had asked Jesse to protect me, and he planned to do it. It was like I had a bodyguard, he was never more than two feet away from me. I wanted to shove him away, I hate having my personal space crowded, but I knew my shove might have more of an effect on him than your average shove. The last thing I need is to be compromised. 

Right now I'm sitting on the living room couch of Cindy's apartment, watching an old rerun of COPS on Saturday morning with Jesse while I can hear Cindy and Miguel making out in the bedroom. Actually, if I lean a little closer in Jesse's direction I can see them. I'm just glad they don't sleep together while I'm sitting there. I know that they head back to the apartment that Miguel and Jesse are sharing so they can do that while Jesse just stays at the club, then Cindy comes home when she's done. I prefer having her around, somehow I feel safe.

Anything I doubted about my new friends at the beginning has been proven wrong. They're not freaks that want to take me hostage or anything like that, they're just really generous. Plus Cindy already explained away my confusion about her and Jesse. She said she'd just told me that they were old friends because she rarely told anyone they were related. Apparently whoever they're trying to keep from finding them would have an easier time finding them if people they knew were brother and sister. From what she's said, which isn't much, this guy that's following them has been keeping an eye on them, usually at their expense, so they were avoiding him so they could be together. When she wasn't looking, I snuck a wistful smile, that sounded a lot like Zack.

I glanced over at Jesse to see what he was doing. He'd been taking apart a pen and tearing up small bits of paper for a few minutes now. His eyes kept darting to the bedroom where Cindy and Miguel were in their own little world. After a couple more minutes of watching him roll the tiny bits of paper into balls, I had to indulge my curiosity.

"What are you doing?" I whispered, keeping my voice soft enough so that the lovebirds wouldn't hear me. 

He glanced at me and raised an eyebrow mischievously. "Have you ever seen a spitwad shooter?"

"A what?"

"Spitwad shooter. It's really simple. All you do is take apart a pen so you're just left with the main body of it. Then you ball up tiny pieces of paper and put them in your mouth to get them wet and shoot them through the empty pen. If you get enough power behind it, you can cover quite a bit of distance in one shot."

When his eyes darted once again towards the bedroom, my mouth dropped open. "You're not..."

He grinned and wiggled his eyebrows. "Oh, but I am." With that said, he placed one of the balls in his mouth, put one end of the pen's body up to his mouth, worked his tongue so the ball was in the opening of the pen, and blew hard. I covered my mouth to stifle my giggles as the spitwad landed perfectly on the back of Miguel's neck and dropped to the floor. At first I wondered if he was going to feel it, but then his hand went up to his neck and he felt around. There was nothing there, so he went back to kissing Cindy and seemed to forget about it. 

Jesse nudged me in the side. "Want to give it a try? It's more fun that you might think."

I studied him for a moment, then took the pen and one of the balls that he held out to me. Copying his actions, I took aim at Cindy's bare arm and fired. It struck its target and hit the ground. For a moment she used her other hand to see what had hit her, but as there was nothing there she too chose to forget about it. I grinned and passed the pen back to Jesse. We sat there for a good fifteen minutes just shooting spitwads at our friends, and they were so wrapped up in each other that they seemed to have developed a short term memory problem. I couldn't see how they could just forget about it each time and not make the connection after it happened repeatedly, but apparently they could. It wasn't until they decided to stop that the connection was made.

Cindy was the first to figure it out. She swung her feet over the edge of the bed and started to stand up, then plopped back down and picked up one of her feet. Apparently she had stepped on several of the spitwads that had fallen to the ground and they had stuck to her foot. Miguel saw her foot and looked down to the floor where there was practically a pile of the tiny balls. The two of them looked up at me and Jesse at the same time. There was dead silence for a moment while we stared at each other, then the fight broke out. 

"You asshole!" Cindy cried and she launched one of the pillows from the bed at Jesse's head. He ducked it easily, but the next one hit me. For a moment she looked shocked and seemed about to apologize, but I decided not to hear it. Instead, I threw the pillow back at her. Soon the pillows were flying back and forth between myself and Miguel and Cindy. Jesse, instead of helping me, started pelting them with spitwads as they focused their attention on me. 

It wasn't until over an hour later that we stopped, completely breathless. The fight had progressed until we were wrestling in the living room and whacking each other with anything we could find. It was all fun and games, so we were all taking it easy. The only thing I had been worried about was that my barcode might show a little while we were fooling around. That's the last thing I need.

It wasn't until around noon that the guys started acting funny. They started shooting side glances at Cindy as though she had suddenly turned into an atom bomb, and she was acting pretty strangely too. I noticed she was walking differently, there was more swing in her hips and it looked like she was trying to show her body off. Everything about her body language seemed to be saying something, but I was getting the feeling that I was missing the message. It seemed that Jesse and Miguel were catching on to it though, from the strange looks they were giving her. 

Jesse finally took my arm and led me out into the hallway. "Why don't we go for a ride or something, I think they need to spend a little time alone right now."

"What's going on? Don't think that I didn't catch all those weird looks you were giving her. Why is she acting so funny?"

"I can't really explain that to you, all I can tell you is that we need to stay out of that apartment for a couple days."

"Where am I supposed to stay?"

I was little worried that he might tell me I should just find my own place, but I guess he wasn't thinking along those lines. In fact, he shot me a nervous look and said, "You could stay with me until it's safe to go back. There's two bedrooms, and it's more than obvious that Miguel won't be using his. I'll be gone half the time anyway with work and stuff. Besides, you know how much Keisha likes you."

I didn't really know what to say. Hanging out with Jesse was one thing, but living with him? Even for just a couple days? I'm not sure I could do that. 

"You won't be gone tomorrow. It's Sunday, you don't have work."

"We'll just cope then. It won't be any big deal, and I have quite a few movies. You could knock yourself out with those."

I sat there for a moment in silence, pondering it. I pretty much trust Jesse, he's one of the safest people in the world to be around, but I still don't know if I could handle living with him for a couple days. I nearly smiled as it struck me what Zack's reaction to this would be. I could almost see his face now. I felt a tiny pang of pain, spending so much time with my friends had nearly made me forget that he was gone. Was there any chance that he could ever come back?

*~* Zane

I couldn't help feeling nervous as hell. I had just asked a girl I hardly knew to stay with me for a couple days for Christ's sake! Even though I had good intentions, I wasn't sure she'd see it that way. I'm not sure even I see it that way. I have to admit being around Syl worked me up. That's the first time I've ever been around an X5 in heat, and it had more of an effect on me than I'd expected. Now dirty thoughts were popping into my head every time I looked at something female, and there was no doubt that the thought of Penny sleeping in the same apartment as me turned me on. Ok, fine, I'm your average male. So sue me. 

I bit my lip as we climbed into my car. I didn't want her to be uncomfortable about this. After all, there was no way she could go back to Syl's place. She wouldn't be able to pry Krit and Syl apart with a crowbar, and that was bound to lead to more questions. How was I supposed to explain that my sister had a chemical imbalance every four months that made her extremely horny for a couple days? There's no way that I could make that sound normal, so it's best not to try and explain it at all. No matter how close Penny was to us, we couldn't let her know those things.

I still don't understand how Penny became a part of our lives so easily. She seemed to slip in and fit perfectly, it was like she had always been there. I can still picture the fight Syl and Krit had had at my new apartment after I had left Penny in Syl's. Krit just didn't understand why Syl would do that to him. At first I didn't understand either, but after spending more time with Penny it sort of dawned on me that she has a strange effect on people. She can make anyone like her no matter how cold she is. It took a while for her to warm up to me --three weeks in fact-- but I still liked her beforehand. Even Krit, who was dead set against her seeing as how her arrival got him kicked out, came around after a few days. She seemed to take to him easier, I'm guessing it's because he's taken by Syl and wouldn't think of looking at another woman. Well, maybe he'd look, but he wouldn't do anything about it. Maybe that made her feel safer. 

She finally raised her eyes from her lap and stared out through the windshield. "Are you sure it would only be for a couple days?" I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Would she actually agree to it?

"Yeah, things should be back to normal by then. We'll know for sure when Kr...Miguel comes back." I couldn't believe I had nearly said Krit's name, but she didn't seem to notice. I think she was focusing too much on the problem at hand. I really hoped she'd say yes, it would make for much less questions that I'd have to answer.

"I guess I could stay over for a little while. There's only one little problem: what will I wear? All my clothes are at home."

I couldn't help but notice that she referred to Syl's place as home, but I turned my attention to her little problem. "I guess we'll just have to pick up some stuff at a store or something. You can sleep in one of my shirts, some of them are pretty big, then tomorrow we'll get you some stuff to wear."

She nodded mutely, still staring fixedly through the windshield. After several minutes of silence, she spoke very softly. "I guess I could stay with you then." I didn't get a chance to reply since she turned to look in the side view mirror. "Who's that behind us?"

I looked up into the rearview mirror and studied the truck behind us. My face paled as I recognized the face from the driver's seat. "Penny, you might want to hold on." Not even a split second after I'd spoken I whipped the steering wheel to the right and turned down a side street. I heard Penny cry out in shock, but she had already listened to me and grabbed hold of the handle above her window. The truck behind me nearly missed the turn, but somehow the driver pulled it off. When I saw the driver pick up something that looked like a walkie-talkie, I did something I never thought I'd do. I shouted, "Brace yourself!" to Penny and slammed on the brakes. The car I had was good, it screeched to a nice halt, but the guy behind me wasn't so lucky. Before he had the chance to speak into his walkie-talkie, his truck had crashed straight into the back of my car.

The next few seconds happened in a blur. I had already removed my seatbelt and lunged out the door, all the while grabbing Penny's arm and dragging her with me. The only thing I hadn't counted on was the dumpster next to us. The truck slid sideways behind us, slamming into one end of the dumpster and forcing it in our direction. Still holding onto Penny, I pulled her forward and sideways so we were out of reach of the now quickly moving dumpster. Then the next thing happened, my car was nearly crushed inside, and the front section had been crunched down onto the pedals. Apparently the accelerator was what was being pressed, because the car shot straight towards us. I shoved Penny in the opposite direction as I threw myself in the general direction of the dumpster. The only real problem was that I knew I hadn't shoved Penny hard enough. _Oh God, the car had to have hit her. There's no way it could have missed her, she's not fast enough to get out of the way! _

As soon as everything came to a stop, I lunged over the hood of the car and tried to see where Penny was. I felt a huge surge of relief when I saw that she wasn't directly in front of the car, she was more towards the side. With her back on the ground, it was obvious that only her right side had been struck, but that still wasn't good. The only positive thing it gave me was that her heart hadn't been impacted, but there was no doubt that she'd have broken ribs and most likely a punctured lung. Her ribs would definitely have pushed into it. I just hoped to God that her head hadn't been struck.

A low groan was more than I'd expected. "Penny?" Her eyes opened slowly and she gazed blearily around, not really seeing anything. I kneeled down beside her and started slowly running my hands up her ribs. There was already swelling, but not as much as I had thought I would feel. I lifted up her shirt to chest level so I could get a good look. There was bruising, but there was no sign of a severely broken rib. It didn't even look like anything had been completely broken off. The car must not have hit her nearly as hard as I'd thought.

"Can you breathe alright?"

She nodded slowly, her jaw looked like it had taken quite a hit. Still, from what I could see, she had been a lot luckier than I doubt any other normal person would have been. Making sure that she was comfortable for the moment, I went to the truck and peered inside. There wasn't much to see, it had practically been flattened, but I could tell that the driver had to be dead. I just hoped he hadn't been following us for a while and had already used his walkie-talkie. I had recognized him instantly, he had chased me before. He was one of Lydecker's men, and he was no easy task to get rid of. I guess he just hadn't expected me to pull such a stupid stunt. I just had to make sure they never knew I was the one who got rid of him.

Running up to Penny and pulling her a safe distance from the car despite the obvious pain it caused her, I ran back and opened my glove compartment which thankfully hadn't been jammed shut. I pulled out the whole assortment of weapons Zack had provided me with several months ago. He always gave us fresh supplies to defend ourselves with, and I had more than my choice to pick from now. 

"Thank you Big Brother for wherever you got this!" I whispered fervently to myself, then I pulled the pin out of a grenade and tossed it inside the car. I barely had time to reach Penny before it went off, causing the gas to light on fire and letting the whole car explode along with my pursuers truck. I smiled slightly to myself, let Lydecker try and find any proof that I was here in _that _car.

Carefully gathering Penny into my arms, I started walking to the nearest hospital.

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Author's Note: Yay, I got another chapter done! I'm still not sure when I'll be able to get another one up, I have a history report to do right now but I'm trying to put it off, so I'll just hurry as fast as I can! I hope you like it! Please review, I love reading them and finding out what you think! Any input is greatly appreciated!


	5. Out of the Dark

Disclaimer: I hardly have any money to my name, what would make you think that I could own Dark Angel? Oy vey!

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Zack's Penny

By Be Boring

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Chapter 3: Out of the Dark

*~* Penny

__

It was so dark, but I wasn't in the least disorientated. Although I can't exactly see in the dark, my other senses more than make up for the temporary loss of sight. In fact, I almost would rather be in the dark than in the light. It's the only thing that makes me better. I'm the only one that can do what I do. The others can make their way around in the dark well enough, but for me it's almost second nature. Out in the light I would be as good as gone in a fight with one of my siblings, but in the dark I'm in charge. My other senses come to life, and I can hear the slightest breath, the smallest movement, even the rush of air that comes with the fast movement of an X5 attack. Even Zack could never beat me in the dark.

Zack's ragged breathing gave away his position ahead of me. I knew he was nervous, he'd never attempted something like this with me. A soft shuffling noise from upstairs seemed to indicate a scuffle. I knew Zack couldn't hear it, his senses didn't grow like mine in the dark, but it was like an alarm clock to me. Kari had to be just upstairs.

Somehow Kari had gotten herself into a bit of trouble with one of the local gangs. She was one of the best cat burglars of my siblings, but even she couldn't pull this one off. For some reason she had decided to go after a whole set of stolen watches that the gang had. Apparently they were worth millions of dollars, but getting to them was risky. Some of the members of the gang used to be soldiers at Manticore. They weren't genetically enhanced, but they had been one of the earlier experiments. Manticore decided to try training normal young children from birth to see how they turned out. They had been pretty strong by normal standards, but once Manticore started producing transgenics there was no need for their original experiments. The people in charge of Manticore in those days were gentler than their successors and went through what they thought was a very thorough process to get rid of their experiments' memories. The only problem was that their method was rather new and not very successful. The memories later returned to the released soldiers and they decided to put their considerable knowledge to use. They had gathered up anyone that showed potential for intelligence or strength, and taught them how to become exceptional cat burglars. They aimed for jewelry and antiques and gathered them together, selling them bit by bit over the extremely successful black market that had risen after the Pulse. 

These people weren't stupid. There were those here and there that knew about the gang's collection and chose not to say anything, but they still knew nevertheless. That's why the soldiers decided to booby trap the hell out of their storehouse where they kept their stolen goods, and they did it very_ thoroughly. It's because of this that no one had ever gotten to the goods, but Kari decided to give it a try. She should have seen at first glance that it wasn't going to be an easy task, but apparently she was too set on the collection to care. It's that recklessness that got her into trouble. _

I know she had managed to get close to her target, but that's when she had come across the live sentries near the door. After seeing everything that these people had gone through to protect their loot, I guess she just didn't think they would bother posting guards there. That was her mistake. They took her by surprise in the dark and moved her to a different location. She managed to grab one of their cell phones and give Zack a call, but she had barely been able to give him any information about her whereabouts before she was forced to turn off the phone because someone was coming. Thank God Zack is one hell of a tracker, otherwise we might never have found where they had taken her. Unfortunately, this was where he was forced to include me in the rescue mission.

Knowing the kind of people that he was facing, Zack knew that he needed to be on the top of his game. His best chance to get to Kari would be in the middle of the night, but that would mean going through a very heavily guarded and booby-trapped building to get to her. Although this place wasn't as dangerous as their storehouse, it wasn't going to be a piece of cake either. He would need to know when something was coming, but he wasn't going to be able to rely just on himself for that. To make it safely through that building, he was going to need me. 

The silence as we walked through what seemed to be a corridor was almost eerie. I knew something had to be coming, they were most surely expecting us. Kari had told Zack that they were questioning her to see if anyone knew what she had been up to. She had let them believe that the answer was yes because that meant they would keep her alive to try and get some names out of her. They didn't want to take any chances. Zack just hoped that they hadn't lost their patience with her and killed her since the time she had called him.

The shuffling I had heard earlier led me to believe that Kari was still alive and apparently still fighting. At least that seemed to be a good sign. I reached up and tapped out that message in Morse code on Zack's back. Thank you, Manticore, _I thought wryly. Almost immediately he picked up speed. Just as we reached the stairs I was forced to grab his arm. I could hear something at the top of the stairs. There wasn't a lot of movement, but there was definitely something there. My guess was that there was someone standing guard and the movement was due to the fact that whoever it was was getting tired. Although they probably hadn't noticed us yet, we probably weren't going to get that lucky while we passed them. We're X5s, not ghosts._

I tapped this message to Zack, but I wasn't expecting the reaction I got from him. Instead of pulling me away so he could formulate a plan, which is what he usually did, he tapped out a question to me. He couldn't exactly ask something word-for-word, but I could get the general idea. (Where do you think the guard is?) I listened for a moment, then replied (I think he's at the very top of the stairs, a little off to the left. That's probably the direction the hall goes in. Kari should be no more than ten yards straight ahead once we're in.) Instead of asking another question, he just shot up the stairs and I heard a muffled cry and a snap as Zack broke the guard's neck. Maybe he was a little more worried about Kari than I had suspected. 

I followed at a distance, I wasn't interested in getting in the middle of a fight. I could hear Zack break down a door up ahead. It didn't take long for gunfire to ring out. I tried to listen to what was going on, but the gunshots were throwing off my concentration. It was hard to focus on just one thing. I heard someone approaching the door, but it didn't strike me as being a soldier on the attack. Whoever it was was clearly injured, for there was an irregular beat to the footsteps. However, I still backed away instinctively. I didn't want to take any chances. 

*~* Zane

I was close to panic when I reached the hospital. Penny was struggling in my arms, but she was nowhere near being conscious. The only thing I could guess was that she was dreaming, but it had to be something big. Her body would go completely rigid, then all of a sudden she would start snapping her arms and legs around like she was having a seizure. It was all I could do to hold onto her.

I know I was getting some pretty strange looks from the other people in the ER, but I didn't care. I had to set her down, otherwise it was likely that I would drop her. I had just set her down on the ground when she threw an arm into my face. I felt my nose break from the sudden pressure, but I had other things to worry about. She was going to hurt someone if she kept carrying on like this, or worse, she would hurt herself. An older woman grabbed a box of tissues and handed them to me for my nose, but I just muttered thanks and brushed the box aside. I threw myself on top of her and tried to hold her arms down, I didn't need her damaging her broken bones anymore than they already were. The lady that had given me the tissues looked positively horrified, but I just shouted, "Hold down her legs, she's having a seizure!"

In all truth, I didn't really know what was going on, but I knew we had to make her stop. I only hoped that once her body couldn't keep moving, she would just relax. I felt a little relief when the old woman and who I guessed to be her husband dropped down onto Penny's legs and tried to help me hold her still. It was still about five minutes before her struggling subsided, but I nearly passed out from exhaustion when it did. That girl had more strength than I had ever given her credit for. 

By the time a doctor showed up, I wasn't even sure if Penny was breathing. She seemed to have gone from one extreme to the other and now she was hardly moving at all. The doctor crouched down beside her and studied her up and down.

"How did you get her here?"

"I carried her."

The look on his face made me wish I hadn't said that. "What! There are obviously some broken bones here! Carrying her would just make it worse!" He took a deep breath and gingerly touched her right arm, feeling the swelling beneath his fingers. "What happened?"

"A car hit her. It wasn't going too fast, but the driver didn't have time to come to a complete stop before he hit her."

"Do you know her?"

"She's my wife." _That'll be a newsflash for her when she wakes up._

The doctor looked down at her left hand. "Where's her wedding band?"

"She's a waitress at a flashy restaurant, and they want all their women to appear available." _I can't wait to see her reaction to that!_

That story seemed easy enough to believe for the doctor though. After all, Penny was a knockout. "I'm Dr. Wilseg. I'm the Chief of Staff of this hospital, so anyone you ask about the condition of your wife should be able to answer you. From what I can tell, there's been nothing bad enough to have caused internal damage, but you can never tell with a car accident. No matter how slow that vehicle was going, she could still have suffered serious internal injuries. You might not see her again for a few hours, but I will make sure you find out her condition."

I barely had time to say thanks before Penny was taken from my sight.

*~* Penny

__

The first thing I saw was a flash of red hair, which had to be Kari. For being a cat burglar, she sure was easy to see. The light that was coming from the room let me see the blood flowing from her hip, practically gushing from a gunshot wound. I could see an exit wound on her chest, so she must also have been shot in the back. Before either one of us could do much, Kari was tackled from behind by someone who was obviously a soldier. Although I knew I was at a disadvantage because there was enough light to see by, I threw caution to the wind and lunged forward. I managed to take him by surprise, he had been so focused on Kari that he hadn't noticed me standing there, but he recovered quickly. I had just managed to drag him away from Kari to give her time to escape when I felt a searing pain in my leg. Looking down, I realized he had pulled out a knife and buried it in my thigh. My body's first reaction was to make sure the pain would stop, which meant that my hands clutched either side of his head and twisted hard. 

The sound of a breaking neck seemed to attract Zack's attention. Unfortunately, when he looked over to see what had happened, the other inhabitants of the room saw me too. I threw myself back into the hall, but one of the soldiers had already reached me. His eyes immediately landed on the knife in my leg, but instead of pulling it out and plunging it in somewhere else, he grabbed it and twisted it hard. I let out a cry of pain and slammed my elbow into his face. Now that he had opened up more space on my leg, blood was shooting out from around the handle of the knife. Still, I figured it would just bleed more if I removed the knife. I could see the concern in Zack's eyes, but his attention was drawn away as he was attacked again. 

I took a deep breath and forced myself to run out into the hallway. I was limping heavily, and all the blood made me think that I had severed the artery in my thigh. The knife was long and had gone practically all the way through my leg, so it wouldn't have surprised me much. I could hear Kari somewhere downstairs, but it didn't sound like she was fighting anyone. It was strange though, none of the noises she was making were natural. I dragged myself to the stairs and started descending them. My leg was going slightly numb, so I wasn't in excruciating pain as I headed downstairs. The strange noises continued, now her voice was added to them. She was making short, guttural sounds that made it clear she was in pain. 

In my urgency to get to her, I wasn't paying nearly as much attention to my surroundings as I should have been. I also wasn't being quiet enough. That cost me big time. I had barely set foot in the main corridor before someone crashed into me from the side. This time it was a woman, and she was set on taking me out. She was obviously one of the original Manticore soldiers, her fighting was too good for her not to be. The dark definitely gave me the advantage over her, but I wasn't on the top of my game. My balance was off because of my leg and I knew that if I calculated her position wrong by even the slightest inch I would wind up on the floor, giving her the advantage over me.

I heard Kari grunt from somewhere to my right. I judged that she was about twenty feet away, near the left wall. If only I could get away from this woman, I could possibly get Kari to a place where I could see how badly she was hurt. It was obvious her pain was getting worse, I just had to get to her to see why. I decided to use the simplest fighting style possible: using my opponent's momentum against her. When she pushed against me, I threw myself backward. We crashed into the wall, and my good leg was crushed between my attacker and the wall. We had landed completely wrong, my leg was twisted in an awkward position as her weight came down on top of it, and I was sure it was broken. There was no way it couldn't be.

It seemed that the soldier had noticed, because she brought her fist down hard on my cracked fibula. I yelped in pain, but she wasn't done with me yet. Her hand brushed against the knife, but instead of twisting it, she pulled it out and jammed it into my other thigh. Similar to the last time, the knife went nearly all the way through my leg. Now I was sure that both arteries in my legs were severed. To hell with Kari, I was in more trouble than she was at the moment.

The soldier stood up and grabbed the top of my shirt, trying to drag me to my feet. Apparently she had no thoughts of ending this fight. Just when she leaned back to put some real effort into lifting me, I braced both feet against the ground and flung myself onto her. As soon as she landed on her back with me on top, I pulled the knife out my leg and slit her throat. 

I was shaking uncontrollably as I pulled myself away from her body. It was half from the horror of having someone's blood all over me, and half from the effort the fight had taken while I was losing blood. I knew it was a bad idea to put pressure on either one of my legs, particularly the left one, but nevertheless I staggered towards where I had guessed Kari to be. Crawling wasn't an option, many of the booby traps that Manticore trained us to use were set up to be triggered on the floor. The less contact I had with the floor, the better.

*~* Zane

I hated being so helpless. Sitting around twiddling my thumbs is not something I'm very good at, especially when there's something this important going on. I knew Penny's injuries weren't life threatening, a nurse had been sent out to tell me that much, but they still were going to take a while. They had to try and repair as much damage as possible on her ribs, and they had to set her in a cast for her arm. This meant that I could be sitting out in the waiting room for quite some time.

It was nearly 2:00 PM when Dr. Wilseg came back out. I don't know when the last time it was that I was so happy to see someone in a white coat, but it had to be a long time ago. I just hope that he tells me that I can get Penny out of here soon. I hate hospitals. 

"She'll be just fine if you can get her to calm down. We have already sedated her as strongly as we dare to, but she's still struggling in her sleep. We're hoping you can help us. At the rate she's going she'll hurt her arm worse than it already is. Do you have any idea what could make her act this way?"

"No, I don't know what's going on with her. Is she dreaming?"

"Sort of, but I'm guessing she's remembering something. Most of the time your average dream won't provoke such a reaction, but if the person is reliving something traumatic, then their reaction is much stronger. She won't wake up for a while, but maybe just the presence of her husband will calm her down."

"I can try." _It's too bad I'm not actually her husband. My presence won't make a damn bit of difference with her right now. _I followed the Dr. Wilseg to where they were keeping Penny, and was greeted with the sight of her struggling on the bed, now with a cast to swing around. That's the last thing I need to hit me in the head.

"Good luck," Dr. Wilseg said, then he stepped out of the room. I nervously approached the bed, making sure to walk around so I was on her left side. I didn't want that cast to have a chance of hitting me. I couldn't help but feel bad for Penny, the look on her face told me that her memory had to be something scary. What in the world could she be remembering? She seemed so sweet and innocent, I just didn't see how she could have something so bad to remember.

*~* Penny

__

I could tell as I reached Kari that she was now unconscious, and she was losing blood fast. Her body was cold and clammy, and also still trembling. She needs tryptophan,_ I realized. The stress had sent her into seizures. In the state her body was in, the last thing she needed was for her serotonin problems to send her into a coma. After feeling her pulse and listening to her breathing, I realized Zack needed to get down here fast, otherwise Kari wasn't going to make it._

"Zack!" I shouted. There was no time for being careful about the enemy, I needed Zack to get to us and I was in no state to go looking for him. Almost instantaneously I heard footsteps heading for the stairs. The only thing I could do was pray that they were Zack's. 

"Penny? Where are you?" Zack's voice came as a surprise only a few feet away.

I reached out so that he'd have a better chance of bumping into me. "I'm on the floor next to Kari, just follow my voice. What happened up there?"

I felt his leg brush my hand and in an instant he was on the floor beside me, running his hands over Kari's body to see how badly she was hurt. "Don't worry, I got them all. If you hadn't shouted, the last one wouldn't have been distracted long enough for me to kill him. How are both of you?"

"I've been stabbed in both thighs, and my left leg is broken. Kari's been shot in the back and in her left hip, but those are only the injuries I saw. She was having a seizure earlier, I think she may go into a coma if we don't get her help soon."

"Is she in more immediate danger? I can't call an ambulance, that's too risky and it could chance someone finding these bodies before we're gone."

I nodded, feeling like lead was filling my stomach. It was true that Kari needed Zack's help more than I did, but what if Zack didn't get back in time to help me? I remembered how I had felt the day of the '09 escape. I had believed that I wasn't going to see my big brother again, and that same feeling was coming over me now. There was so much blood escaping from my wounds, what if I bled to death before he returned for me? I already felt dizzy and lightheaded, not to mention how cold and tired I was. I sensed a seizure coming on as well. I usually don't have a lot of problems with seizures, but when I'm extremely stressed I tend to have more.

"Go ahead, I'll be fine," I murmured, trying to keep my voice as level as possible. I couldn't let myself panic, I didn't want my heart to speed up. The last thing I needed was for my blood to start pumping faster. I wanted to do everything I could to make sure that I was still alive when Zack came for me.

Zack squeezed my shoulder reassuringly before he carried Kari off, which is a pretty affectionate gesture when it comes to him. I doubt many of the others have gotten that much out of him. As soon as the light of the open door was gone, I curled up into a fetal position. I couldn't help being terrified, I'm not a naturally optimistic person. Something in me was screaming that I wasn't going to make it long enough to hear my brother's voice again or see his face. This was enough to let a tear escape and slide down my cheek. I'd never felt more alone. There was no noise around me, Zack had been right when he'd said he'd killed everyone else.

The more time I spent alone, the more afraid I became. Something in me knew that it was silly to get this worked up, Zack would move quickly and I wouldn't have anything to worry about, but all the Manticore lessons of expecting the worst were coming back to me full force. Anything could happen to Zack while he was away. What if the soldiers had called for backup and Zack was already dead? I had to push that thought away, there was no point to getting myself worked up. It wasn't going to do me any good. 

After a little while, I had to let some of my fear out. It was almost painful as it built up inside of me.

"Don't leave me, please don't leave me. Oh God, please don't leave me…" The words just kept flowing out of my mouth. Instead of trying to hold them back so I could compose myself again, I just let them keep going. The more I talked, the better I felt. I figured as long as it helped me relax, it should be fine. I rocked back and forth as I spoke, clutching my knees tightly against my chest. I just wanted to be held, for someone to comfort me. Zack would have called it emotional weakness, but I couldn't help it. Zack be damned, I needed comfort.

*~* Zane

I wasn't sure what to do as I lowered myself into a chair next to Penny. What could you say to a person that wouldn't hear you? It was pointless. Then again, I always talk to Keisha and I know she can't understand more than a couple of words that come out of my mouth. Was this any different? 

I was about to start saying something completely useless when she suddenly clutched her sheets in her hands and started whimpering something. Her voice was so soft that I couldn't make it out. Keeping one eye on her cast, I leaned close to her head to hear her better.

"Don't leave me, please don't leave me. Oh God, please don't leave me…" I didn't know what to think, but it was obvious that she was terrified. I had no clue what to do.

"I'm not going to leave you." I whispered, feeling completely stupid. She couldn't hear me any more than the bed could. Why was I wasting my time? Well, if I'm gonna make a fool of myself I may as well take it to the extremes. I managed to pry one of her hands off the sheets and I clutched it with my own. It didn't surprise me that she squeezed it, it was just a reflex from the dream she was having. 

"Don't leave, don't leave. Please don't leave me," she whimpered again. As though she suddenly realized she was holding onto a hand rather than her sheets, her other hand moved towards me to clutch my hand with both of hers. Ok, ok, maybe she understood a little more of what was going on around her than I thought. Now she was almost desperate in the way she was holding onto me. How scared was she?

Slowly, and with my eyes on her cast at all times, I slid into the bed and positioned myself next to her so I could wrap my arms around her. If holding hands calmed her down a little, then a hug should do even better. Right?

*~* Penny

__

I was beside myself with panic by the time the sound of footsteps in front of the building reached my ears. Every horrible scenario had played itself out in my mind until I could hardly think straight anymore. It felt like some sort of nightmare. It's amazing what your own mind can do to you in a life-threatening situation. 

"Penny?"

The sound of Zack's voice was like a beam of light in the darkness. I could have thrown myself into his arms just to feel safe. "I'm in the same place." 

I know it threw him a bit for a loop when I hugged him. Actually, it just threw him. I pretty much knocked him over with how happy I was to see him again. It wasn't just that I would die before returned that was scaring me, it was that maybe it would be because he just wouldn't come back. Every time he goes to one of the other X5s I have to wonder if he'll decide I'm not worth it and he'll just leave me behind. Common sense tells me he wouldn't do that, but my emotional side says it's likely. Zack's right, emotions are completely_ useless._

"What was that for?" he asked with the usual embarrassed air he usually gets when I show affection around him.

"Just for being here."

His arms scooped under me to lift me up. "Come on, let's get out of the dark."

*~* Zane

It seemed to take forever for Penny to relax, but eventually her struggling ceased and she leaned into my arms. Her whole demeanor had changed in about a minute; she'd gone from sheer terror to utter contentment in practically no time at all. Not knowing what to do now that any danger was over, I slowly started running my fingers through her hair. She was cradled like a baby in my arms, and it seemed all too natural. When she wrapped her arms around me, I realized she was smiling. Her memory must have taken a good turn. I settled myself on the bed as comfortably as I could, preparing myself for a long time of just holding onto her, but my eyes had other ideas. I couldn't seem to keep them open. I finally decided I would just rest them for a moment, but once again my body had different ideas. I was asleep before I knew it.

Finding yourself on a cold tile floor after having been asleep in a bed next to a lovely young woman is enough to wake any man up. Penny's scream of surprise didn't help matters any. All I knew was my ass was sore and I had a headache. It's not the best way to wake up.

"What's going on?" she gasped. I guess waking up and finding herself next to me came as a shock to her. 

"Sorry. I didn't know it would scare you that much, otherwise I wouldn't have fallen asleep. Trust me, nothing was going on. How are you feeling?"

"I guess I'm ok. God, I'm sorry for dumping you on the ground like that. You just scared me to death. Why were you on the bed?"

"You were having a nightmare or something, I was just trying to calm you down and I guess I was more tired than I thought. What were you dreaming about?"

Her face seemed pale for a moment, but she shook it off quickly and shrugged. "I don't remember."

So she didn't want to tell me. I can handle that. "Are you up for some food? I promise it won't be hospital food. I'll go get take out." Maybe she didn't want to share it with me now, but I hoped that someday she would. I'd like her to have at least that much trust in me.


	6. Something Kinda Funny Going On

Disclaimer: Me. Own. Nothing. Got it? 

****

Zack's Penny

By Be Boring

****

Chapter 4: Something Kinda Funny Going On

*~* Penny

I am so sick and tired of this hospital bed. It's so depressing lying around on a hard bed with nothing to look at but white walls. My only happier moments are when Jesse comes by. I guess Miguel and Cindy aren't done with their alone time yet, so he's the only visitor I get. He's apologized profusely so many times that I almost feel bad for the poor guy. He's beating himself up about my injuries to the point where I'm starting to get sick of it. I've told him time and time again that I don't blame him, but it's like I'm talking to the wall. I tell him not to worry about it, and five minutes later he's back to saying how sorry he is. 

There's one good thing that's come out of this. I haven't had to worry about staying at Jesse's place because I had to stay overnight at the hospital. It's only postponing it though, I'll be released today. The doctor was shocked at the improvement my body had made just over the night. According to him I'll be back to normal in just a few days, a week at the most. I asked him to tell Jesse that I just hadn't been hurt nearly has bad as they had thought, but there's no way he couldn't be suspicious about this. I'm just grateful that there haven't been any blood tests, there would be no way to explain that.

I smiled as Jesse entered my room, packed down with all the take-out he had gotten. He had gotten a huge pizza, it had to be over three inches thick, as well as Chinese food for me. It seems that he is capable of eating an entire pizza by himself. I'm guessing it would be a bad idea to tell him that I can do that too. I could just imagine the look on his face when he sees that. Of course, I don't plan on letting him know about my humungous appetite. 

"Do you think you brought enough?"

He grinned and handed me the carton of Chinese food. "Nah, I think I could have gotten more. I just didn't want to look like a pig."

Coincidences, coincidences. "That food had to be heavy, why didn't you ask someone to help you?"

"I can handle it fine on my own. So, are you ready for all this?" I couldn't believe it when he pulled another Chinese carton from behind his back. Where had he been keeping that?

"Wow, you take a girl seriously when she says she's hungry!"

"I've learned from past experience not to take a girl lightly when she talks about food. Do you think you can eat all this?"

I couldn't help but grin. "I think I'll manage somehow."

*~* Zane

I can't help but watch Penny as she eats. I want to figure her out, she's just so secretive. There's lots of things I want to know: where she's from, what made her the way she is, and why she just can't seem to open up to anybody. She's done a great job of not letting anyone know those things so far, but I hope to change that. 

Syl might be more up for the job than I am, but with the state she's in now I doubt we'll be getting much help from her. I've called her apartment a few times, but nobody's answering. I can take a hint. I could see it made Penny nervous when I informed her that she would have to stay at my place for at least one night. I don't know how long Syl's heat cycles are, but there's no way Penny will get out of staying with me. Any hope I had of getting further with her has been pretty much shattered; she's too keyed up about staying with me to be open to any suggestions. Damn the luck.

As I opened the pizza I had brought for myself, I looked down at my cell phone. Why hadn't Zack returned my call yet? I had called him a little earlier because I knew that it wouldn't be too much longer before he showed up, he always showed up around my sisters' heat cycles to make sure they didn't do something they'd regret, and there would be no way of keeping him from finding out about me living here. I decided it was better that he learn beforehand about what was going on, that way maybe the explosion would be less severe. I knew he checked his messages every day, so why hadn't he returned my call by now? This is something that would bring him charging, but there wasn't so much as a peep from him so far. 

One thing occurred to me as I seriously dug into my pizza: what would Zack think about Penny? I remember his reaction to Tinga getting married, how would he feel about us letting a perfect stranger into our lives? It wasn't like she knew anything yet, but Zack would be sure to point out that the key word in that sentence was _yet_. He was instinctively untrusting of anything new, and Penny wouldn't be a very pleasant surprise for him. I just hoped we could convince him to let her stick around. 

"What are you thinking about?" Penny's voice seemed to come out of nowhere. I realized that my pizza had stopped halfway to my mouth as I was wondering about Zack.

"Oh, a guy I used to work with wants me to go back and help him close up shop." Well, that wasn't really a lie, Randy _had_ called me. I had worked in an auto mechanics shop with him, but since I had come to get Syl's and Krit's asses out of trouble I had had to leave him behind. Now the place was dead broke and he wanted me to come back and tie up loose ends. After all, I had been the owner of the place.

The answer seemed to satisfy her, but I almost wished I could tell her about Zack. _I'll get over it when Syl's out of heat._ I think it's just that I don't have any other X5s to talk with about how nervous I am about Zack. Once Syl and Krit are free to talk again, I'll feel much better. _Hey, wait a second! I'll call Tinga! _I don't know why that didn't occur to me before. I had found the number for Tinga's place in Syl's apartment. Tinga would be sure to listen.

"I'll be right back," I muttered quickly to Penny. I could feel her eyes on my back as I left the room, but I was so set on talking to Tinga that I didn't care. It took me about a minute to remember Tinga's number, but the moment I remembered I grabbed the nearest payphone. 

I couldn't help but bounce a little bit on my feet as the phone started ringing on the other end. "Hello?" a male voice asked. That had to be Charlie. What was Tinga's married name again? I glanced back toward Penny's room and it hit me, Tinga's alias was Penny as well.

"Hi, is Penny there?"

"Hold on just a second." 

I couldn't help but smile as I heard the ruckus that immediately followed his reply. I could hear a young boy saying "I'll give the phone to Mommy!" while Charlie obviously tried to ignore him. I heard the tinkle of glass breaking, then Tinga's sweet voice snapping "Case, get away from that! I don't want you cutting yourself. Hello?" She had finally managed to reach the phone.

"Tinga? It's Zane."

I grinned as I heard her muffled squeal. As always, she was so excited that she had pressed a hand over her mouth to suppress the squeal that would undoubtedly escape. "God, Zane, it's so good to hear your voice! It's been so long!"

"Too long," I agreed.

"What's going on, little brother?" Damn, she always did know when something was up.

"Have you heard from Zack by any chance?" I hoped that if I didn't sound too anxious, then she wouldn't get worried. Trouble is, that never works with big sisters.

"No, have you? I called him a week ago to tell him Jondy's living just down the street. You'd think that would get his attention, but we haven't gotten so much as a phone call. This isn't like him." 

I smiled again. It seems I wasn't the only one that had decided to try and get closer to my siblings once Zack had turned his back for a moment. "I called him in the middle of the night to tell him I was living near Syl with Krit."

"Wait, near Syl, with Krit? Aren't they living together anymore?"

"It's kind of complicated. They're not separated, don't worry about that. Anyways, I figured it would be better if I let Zack know about my living arrangements since normally he would come around this time anyway. Syl's in heat right now, and I know he always comes around at that time, which means he would have found out about all this anyway. I just don't get why he hasn't at least called."

To my surprise, Tinga didn't seem that upset by this. "That's not too strange. He doesn't show up around my heat cycles either because I have Charlie around. Maybe he figures Syl has Krit so she doesn't need him checking up on her around that time."

Ok, that sounded plausible. Krit was more than capable of keeping Syl safe when she was so out of control, but that just didn't seem like Zack. He at least should have called me back. Suddenly, there was another tinkling of glass from the other end of the line. "Case, get away from there right now! Sorry, but I have to go. A kid with a genetically enhanced mother tends to be more rambunctious than your average child. Talk to ya later, little brother."

"Yeah, later old girl." I heard an indignant but playful "hmmph!" from Tinga's end, then the click as she hung up. I had to admit that I felt a little better. Tinga usually had that effect on people.

*~* Penny

I know Jesse keeps saying there's nothing wrong, but he looks so worried. He seemed a little better after he came back and resumed eating his pizza, but there was still something troubling him, I'm sure of it. The only good thing about that was he didn't notice that I'd eaten every last bit of my Chinese food. Come on, I'm depressed. I'm allowed to eat a little extra.

"Where did you go?"

"Nature calls," was the answer I got. Now, there is no way a need for the bathroom upset him that much. There had to be more to it. 

"Oh, I didn't mention it before, but as soon as I'm finished eating I can take you home. Unless of course you want to stay here."

"Oh hell no!" I had no plans of staying there one second longer than I had to. At least my reaction brought a slight smile to his face.

Nearly a half hour later I was collapsing onto Jess's couch. The elevator had been broken, so we had to climb the stairs. I was completely exhausted. My injuries were healing quickly, but the healing process was taking a lot out of my body. Before I knew it, I had fallen asleep.

__

"Oh, come on Zack! Just this once?"

"No, I'm not risking anything happening to you."

"But you do it all the time, why can't I?"

"I've had a lot more experience than you. Besides, the first time can go pretty rough. I don't want you getting hurt."

"I won't, not if I'm with you. You're gonna have to give me some better reasons."

"You're too young," came Zack's grumbling reply.

"You were even younger when you started. Come on, I'm really curious. We'll take it slow the first time, okay?"

"No! Besides, there's too many people around. We'd need more privacy for this."

"Then we'll go somewhere quiet."

"I don't think you understand how fast things could get out of control, even I might not be able to stop anything from happening. There's dangerous consequences if we're not careful."

"Then we'll take every precaution. I just want to do it so bad!"

I could see the debate going on in his mind, then he rolled his eyes. "Is there any good reason why I should agree to this?"

"Oh come on! Are you going to be my C.O. or my brother?"

"Fine, I'll drive into the country and give you driving lessons. Are you happy?"

I nearly screamed I was so happy. "You have no idea! I swear I won't go over ten miles an hour."

He finally smiled at that. "Well, I think you can go a little _faster."_

*~* Zane

"Randy, you have no idea how busy I am right now. I have a lot to worry about without having to come back and help you sell the place. You have more business sense than I do! If you can't find a buyer, then ditch the place! I'm sure the homeless people of LA would appreciate it."

Randy took a deep breath, which I had no doubt was to launch into another argument to get me to come back to LA. "You don't understand. I got The Car."

"You got the car? What are you talking about?"

"Not the car. _The Car!!_"

"Oh shit, you don't mean..."

"That's exactly what I mean. Old Jake got into a major crash with it, and he's depending on me to fix it up! I can't do this on my own, but you know what he'll do if I don't get it done right!"

Unfortunately, I did know what he meant. Old Jake was practically the neighborhood mafia grandfather, and his car was dubbed The Car. No fancy name, just The Car. You couldn't forget to put in the capitals, because that was how Jake always said it. There was always a lot of emphasis on it, like it was the only car in the world. Jake tended to have a nasty reputation for making life miserable for those who didn't do something just right for him. I didn't want to go back to LA, but I also didn't want Randy getting his head blown off just because he was too incompetent to do this job right.

"Fine, I'm coming back. Are you happy?"

"Oh man, you have no idea!"

I groaned as I hung up the phone and slouched down onto my bed. With Zack being a no-show and Penny injured without a place to go, I wasn't too happy with my choices. _She can't go stay with Syl until Syl is out of heat, but I can't wait that long to go back. I'll have to take Penny with me._ That pretty much decided it. We would most likely leave in the morning.

I walked out into the living room to share the news with Penny, but I couldn't see her. Panicked, I started towards my open window, then caught her reflection in the glass. I turned and let out a gasp of relief, she had fallen asleep on my couch. I walked over and grabbed blanket from my closet to put over her. It was a pleasant surprise to see her smiling in her sleep, at least she was having good dreams. It might just have been because it had felt so natural back at the hospital, but for whatever reason I sat down next to where she was sleeping in a sitting position and pulled her over to lean on my shoulder. I then covered us both with the blanket. It felt more natural than anything else in the world.

******************************************************************************

A/N: Sorry this took so long. I just finished semester exams! I should be able to see what I got on them tomorrow, I'm not sure if I should be scared or excited. :P


	7. Sound The Alarms

Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing DA related, and if I did, I wouldn't be wasting my time here, would I?

****

Zack's Penny

By Be Boring

****

Chapter 5: Sound the Alarms

*~* Zane

As interesting as it was to watch Penny sleep, I knew we had to get out of there early. That's why right now we're on the interstate, doing about 80 mph, while she tries to nap while sitting in my rather uncomfortable car. This is the third day we've been driving, and it's really starting to get to me, not to mention what it's doing to her. She's still worn out from her ordeal, and I didn't give her nearly enough time to rest before we took off. I tried to explain to her about The Car, even though she kept saying she understood, but I still wish I didn't have to do this. I know how exhausting it is for her right now, plus I wanted to stay where I was in case Zack showed up. Then again, if he really wanted to find me, he would.

"Cop," Penny mumbled dully. She'd been keeping an eye out for police in between attempts at naps just so I didn't get pulled over for speeding. I appreciated the help, especially seeing as how she seemed able to detect them before I did. She also seems to be able to tell when a bout of apologizing was about to burst from me, then she just waves me off. I think she's gotten sick of it. 

"Did he notice me?"

"I don't think so. He hasn't turned around in any case."

"Are you sure you don't want to lie down in the back seat? You'd probably be a lot more comfortable."

She just smiled slightly. "I'll be fine. Being a little tired never hurt anyone."

Well, she had a point. Still, I have no urge to upset her recovery. She seems to be doing really well so far. In fact, she really impresses me. I haven't seen too many people get hit by a car and walk away with just a few cracked ribs and a broken arm. I doubt even I could pull that off. She even seems to be holding up pretty well mentally, she hasn't complained at all. Then again, she might just be holding that in.

I looked up ahead on the road. WELCOME TO LUDLOW. Well, we weren't too far from LA. It was starting to get late, so I figured I had better get Penny into a real bed so she can get some actual sleep rather than an occasional doze. It looked like a tiny place, but I hoped they at least had a hotel. 

"What are you doing?" Penny asked as I pulled off the interstate. "We haven't made it to LA yet."

"I know, we're staying the night here." I couldn't help but be surprised at the look she shot me. Penny's never been one to get angry as far as I could tell, but she sure as hell looked pissed now.

"Do you think I can't handle the trip? I have been through a _lot_ worse than this, trust me! Nothing pisses me off more then having people assume I'm weak!"

I had no clue what to say. Her eyes flared as though they could literally light me on fire. I felt a chill go down my spine as she stared at me. If I wasn't an X5, that look would have completely terrified me. _Jesus Christ that looks a lot like the look Zack gives us when we make him mad. _She wasn't any less beautiful, but her beauty had definitely made her scary if anything else. It made me keep my mouth shut until we reached a decent-looking hotel.

*~* Penny

I know I shouldn't have overreacted like that, but I couldn't help it. I've been trying to keep it to myself, but ever since Jesse got me up this morning, my mood has been going through drastic changes. I've gone from feeling really happy to extremely pissed off, to sad to the point of nearly crying, to feeling like something really bad was coming. Jesse just happened to catch me while I was pissed off. I don't know why I feel something bad coming, but I keep getting the feeling I'm forgetting something important and that it's not going to turn out good if I don't remember soon. 

That feeling came back full force when Jesse went to get us a room. The horrible thing is that I can't exactly put my finger on what it is. It's like when a word is on the tip of your tongue, but you just can't get it out no matter how hard you try. It's almost like what people would call a premonition, but I was just getting a feeling, no visions. Dammit, why couldn't I figure out what was going on?

I didn't feel much better when Jesse came to get me out of the car, although I could have laughed at how careful he was around me. It was like he was afraid I would blow up at him again, which didn't surprise me. I've gotten a lot of my personality from Zack, and he could put the fear of God in the devil if he was angry enough. I just felt a little stupid, I really had overreacted too much. I shouldn't have said what I did about hating people thinking I'm weak. That was just taking out old frustrations on him, and that was completely unfair to him. 

"You don't have to tiptoe around me," I finally grumbled after a while. After we had come into the room, he'd done everything he could to avoid me and try to stay as silent as possible. I was never going to be able to go to sleep while he was acting this way. 

"Sorry," he blushed. "I didn't mean to bother you."

__

Men, I thought irritably. _They just don't get it._ With that thought in mind, I let myself drift off to sleep.

*~* Zane

Ok, I don't know what the hell happened to Penny in the car, but I was sure as hell glad she had gone to sleep. I didn't want to see the she-demon rise again. Keeping an eye on her sleeping form, I grabbed the car keys and slid out the door. I didn't want her around when I went to deal with Old Jake. She could wind up getting hurt if I made Jake upset. He wasn't the most agreeable old guy in town.

I don't think I've seen a face happier than Randy's when I showed up at the door to the shop. If he didn't know how I felt about physical displays of emotion, I think he would have given me the biggest hug he could muster up.

"Oh thank God you came! I don't think I can do this alone!"

"Just let me see The Car and I'll see what I can do."

__

Oh hell no. How could Jake expect us to fix that? I couldn't believe my eyes. There is no way that anyone could fix that car. It was a complete wreck! Anyone looking at it would never be able to tell you that it had once been a car. Hell, they wouldn't be able to tell you it had been a vehicle of any kind. It looked like it had been stood up on its bumper and had a bulldozer dropped on it. Jake must have jumped out before that accident happened, otherwise he never would have made it. There's one thing I knew for sure though, there was no way for us to fix it. Now the only problem was how to approach the subject with Old Jake.

"How long have you had it?"

Randy started shifting his weight from one foot to another nervously. "About a week and a half."

"Have you worked on it at all?" I figured I knew the answer, but Randy surprised me.

"Yeah, and I've probably made it look twice as good as it did before it came here."

__

Twice as good? What did it look like before? "Is there anything that you think could still possibly be operable?" I asked tentatively. It was a stupid question to begin with.

"I doubt it. The best thing we could do is buy Jake a new car, but we're never going to find one like this. He had it specially built himself 'back in his day' as he says."

I gave a low whistle. "It must have cost him both arms and legs to get this made. Unfortunately, it was crushed as easily as a pop can. He didn't get even close to his money's worth."

"What are we going to do?" Now the real problem came out. I knew I could handle myself with Jake, but Randy certainly couldn't. His punch was about as powerful as shooting a feather out of a gun, and his aim with one of those wouldn't be too good either. He probably hadn't so much as touched a gun in all his life, so I doubt he even owned one. I just hoped he could run. Wait, maybe he wouldn't have to.

"Randy, I want you to go get your mother's car."

"What? You know I won't touch that car, it hasn't been touched since Mom's crash."

"Are you sure it's still in the same place? Right in the middle of that field?"

"Yeah, no one's ever had a use for that area so no one bothered to touch it. Why?"

"You once commented that The Car seemed to handle a lot like your mom's car. Your mom's car isn't so badly smashed up, maybe there's a chance that we can fool Jake into believing it's his."

"Are you sure he won't be able to figure it out?"

"Not if we do it right. With it in this condition, he must have given you a list of what was all in The Car, not to mention how many times we've seen it before. I think we just might be able to pull it off." Although I sounded confident, I was pretty much already accepting the fact that by this time next week I'd be scraping Randy's remains off the shop floor. If there was enough of him to scrape up, that is. I wasn't at all sure this was going to work, I just wanted to buy him some more time.

"Call the tow truck and let's get this baby started."

*~* Penny

__

"Are trying to say what I think you are? Are you finally going to see Max?" I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Zack had pretty much sworn off going to see Max face to face, despite the fact that he'd been keeping an eye on her from a distance for several years. Now, all of a sudden, he had changed his mind.

"I won't be letting her know it's me. I'll use an alias. She hasn't seen me in nine years, how could she possibly recognize me?"

"She's not exactly stupid. Your personality hasn't changed one bit since Manticore, after five minutes of being around you she'll have it figured out."

"That's where you're wrong. I just won't act like myself. I've been able to take on completely different personas before, what makes you think I can't fool Max?"

"You two were too close, she'll eventually see through you. Even if it takes her forever, something about you will set off something in her mind." The Max I remembered certainly would be able to pick Zack out of a crowd. I don't see how much she could have possibly changed in the past nine years, so she should still be able to manage. "Will you ever let her know who you are?"

"Not if I can help it. I've seen her with normal people. She's so emotional, she's made connections with others. She has even been trying to find us. As far as I know she has two sources, one of them being much less skilled than the other one. I already know who one is, but the other is too well hidden. I'm guessing there's a lot of money behind it."

"Well, good for her. I hope she's getting something good out of it in return." I hadn't meant anything sexual, but I saw Zack's eyes flash dangerously. He hadn't even spoken to Max in nine years, how could he care about her this much? This was more than just a brotherly love, I was pretty sure he was in _love with her. Of course, he'd never admit that._

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

"I told you."

"Shut up, I know. I guess I underestimated her."

"How did she react to seeing you?"

"How do you think? As any normal emotional person would do; she hugged me. Don't look at me like that."

I couldn't possibly hold back my smirk, I could just imagine how Zack felt to have Max's arms around him. No matter how much he might protest, I knew he had enjoyed it. "What are you going to do now that she's seen you?"

"I may as well keep going to check in on her. There's no point in hiding from her, she knows what my face looks like now. Just for your information though, she didn't recognize me. She found out my address and showed up, then realized who I was. That didn't impress me too much though, that one contact of hers seems to know what he's doing. The only thing that really impressed me was her fighting. She hasn't forgotten a thing, if anything she's improved."

"Do you think she'd be able to beat you?"

"I doubt it."

That was it. No reasons why, he just doubted it. That didn't surprise me, Zack tended to think a lot of his strength. It's true that so far none of the X5s have been able to beat him in a fight, but Max always had something special to her. Under normal circumstances, she was about the same as your average X5. If she had a motive, you'd better get your ass out of the way before it gets pounded into the ground. Personally, I felt that if Zack tried to take her away from some of the people he said she'd grown close to, she'd give him a fight to remember. I just wished I could be there to see the look on his face.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

"Zack? What's going on?" I had woken up in the middle of the night to the feel of a body pressed against mine. Somehow, though, it didn't bother me. In fact, I felt an electric tingle run down my spine. It took me several moments of Zack kissing my neck before I could snap out of my pleasure-filled daze and realize what was going on. 

"Zack, get out before the pheromones get to be too strong!" I struggled to kick him off, but he wasn't himself at all. It seemed the pheromones had already done their work even though I wasn't fully in heat yet. It wouldn't be too long though before I was in the exact same state that Zack was. At the moment though, I couldn't have cared less. The feel of Zack's lips against my neck was heaven, and his hands were starting to grip the hem of my nightshirt. As soon as he had raised the shirt to hip level, something in me came to my senses. I still had some time left before I lost complete control, and I was going to take advantage of it. I let my hands slide up Zack's back, then I grabbed his hair and yanked as hard as I could. It may not have been at my full strength, but it was enough to make him yelp in surprise. As soon as he lifted his head up, I gathered every ounce of strength that my heated body allowed me to, and punched him as hard as I could. It was only a halfhearted punch because part of me wanted him, but it was enough to clear his eyes and get him to look at me clearly. It was obvious he was shocked for some time, then he leapt off the bed. I've never seen him move that fast, but he was out of the room before anything could be said.

I should have seen this coming. A person earlier today had snapped at me, saying that just because I had PMS didn't mean I had to go around insulting everyone. That's one of the things that happens to me when my heat cycle's approaching, I get extremely moody. Zack's explanation for it is that my hormones go insane right before my heat cycle in preparation for it, so that's what causes my moodiness. It didn't matter to me what the explanation was, I just wished I could take something to keep it from happening. Any pills for crazed hormones would be welcome. The only problem is that the X series is designed to ward off any medication. There's some that will get to us, but any hormone pills would probably be cleaned out by my body before they had a chance to work.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

"Jesse," a low moan escaped my throat. Similar to how Zack had done, he was kissing my neck and his hands were starting to play with my nightshirt. I clutched his shoulders as his lips pressed firmly against mine, then flipped him over onto his back so I was above him on the bed. I tore his shirt straight down the middle, feeling an almost predatory satisfaction in the way his chest was heaving. My fingers ran over his finely muscled stomach, sliding down until they reached his belt buckle. Just after I had removed his belt, he grabbed my hips and rolled us over so he was lying on top of me again.

"I'm in control now," he whispered, then my world exploded in a flash of pain.

*~* Zane

The more I look at Randy's mother's car, the more I think that this just might work. It had been years since I had seen that car, so I guess its similarities to The Car had completely escaped me. This wouldn't take so much work; in fact, there wasn't that much damage at all. It had flipped a few times, but it hadn't caved in or anything. It would need a new windshield, it need to be repainted, and some of its parts needed to be changed to match The Car's, but it just might work out. 

Randy wandered over to the small TV set we had in the shop. "Do you mind if I turn this on? The radio got busted a couple of weeks ago, and it's getting too quiet in here for me."

"Go right on ahead," I replied tonelessly. I was used to this, Randy always needed some noise in order to work right. I could work better in the quiet, but the noise didn't bother me. Soon Randy and I were working on his mother's car comfortably. We both loved working like this, I couldn't believe I hadn't realized how much I missed it while I was gone. 

I had finally crawled out from under the car to get a drink when I realized that there was no noise coming from the TV. Randy must have gotten so involved with his mother's car that he didn't notice the silence. I reached over and twiddled the buttons on it, but there was no change. Suddenly, a picture of eyes with colored bars running across the top and bottom of the screen reading "STREAMING FREEDOM VIDEO" filled the TV screen. I had heard of this guy. I hardly ever saw this guy's video's from LA, but I'd heard more than enough about him. He was usually called Eyes Only, but I've heard people call him a messenger of God. Supposedly he works against the police to expose covert operations to the eyes of the country. I couldn't help but be a little curious about what he had to say. I took a step back and practically let my soda flow straight down my throat without swallowing. 

"Do not attempt to adjust your set. This is a streaming freedom video bulletin. This cable hack cannot be traced it cannot be stopped and it is the only free voice left in this city. This is a message to those known as X5. You've been compromised. You're in danger. You know what to do."

I froze, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Was this guy for real? _Oh God, Zack!_ Was it possible that Zack had compromised us? I couldn't see how that could be possible, but it would explain why he hadn't replied to me in so long. What was I doing? Why was I just standing still? I had to get moving!

"Hey, uh, Zane, hand me that 3/16th, will ya?" I heard Randy ask from the shop, but I was already gone. The sound of Eyes Only's voice followed me though.

"I repeat, you've been compromised. You know what to do. This message will repeat every hour on the hour until each of you has checked in."

I could still hear Randy calling my name, but I knew I had to leave him behind. I had to leave everything behind. Wait, no, I couldn't leave Penny. There was no way I could just leave her injured in a hotel room in the middle of nowhere. I had to go back to Ludlow and run off with her. I knew she wouldn't understand, but I didn't have many options left open to me.

*~* Penny

I was stunned when I realized I was sitting on the floor of a strange bedroom. It took me nearly a minute to remember that I was in a hotel room because Jesse had refused to take me all the way to LA tonight. _Why is the room so hot?_ My dreams slowly came back to me, but it wasn't all connected. My dreams had more been along the lines of memories, except for the last one. Why had I been dreaming about sleeping with Jesse? If I hadn't fallen out of bed and hit my head on the bedside table, the dream would have taken me all the way. A strange but all too familiar burning shot through my thighs at the thought of Jesse. _Oh shit. I'm in heat._

**************************************************************

A/N: Damn, this one took a while too. I did really good on my exams, but writer's block nearly had me crushed under it. Wouldn't ya know it? Just a warning: the whole story will be bumped up to an R rating when I post the next chapter.


	8. Heated Realizations

Disclaimer: Fine. I own it. I own it all. Mwahahahaha!

****

Zack's Penny

By Be Boring

****

Chapter 6: Heated Realizations

*~* Zane

I was nearly to my car when I stopped to pull out my cell phone and dialed Zack's contact number. The words "state your condition" greeted my ears. _Nice message. He really should change that._ I hesitated for a moment, then went on ahead. 

"It's Zane. I'm just leaving Los Angeles, heading to Ludlow. I'll be getting further away soon, but I might have some things to slow me down. I'll be going to Santa Fe, I'll get back to you when I get there."

Hanging the phone back up, I continued on to my car. I couldn't hear Randy calling me anymore, but I knew he was probably starting to really freak out right about now. I wish I didn't have to leave him alone to deal with Jake, but I didn't have much choice. Randy would be able to figure out what I was. He wasn't stupid, he could put two and two together. Eyes Only had said that the message would repeat every hour on the hour until we had all checked in. Randy would probably see it or at least hear about it, then he'd do the math. I hated leaving right now, not to mention putting Penny in danger by bringing her along with me, but I couldn't just leave her there. She seemed so helpless, she wouldn't know what to do if I left. I could remember the way she'd been when I first met her; she had no idea what to do with herself. She probably would have contacted Syl or Krit, but hopefully they'd seen the message and were on the move. 

I was perhaps five minutes from the hotel when my cell phone went off. I hadn't been expecting it to, but maybe it was Krit or Syl wondering if I'd seen the message. "Hello?"

"What will slow you down? Is it the dog?"

I gave a huge sigh of relief. So Zack _was_ ok. "No, I left Keisha with my landlord in Chicago. I have a girl with me right now, and there's no way I can leave her behind."

"Why not? Is she an X5?"

"No, she's an ordinary. I just can't leave her."

"Don't let--"

"I know, I know. Don't let phony sentimentality get in the way of my judgment. I'm not, it's just that I don't think she can take care of herself without me. Where have you been?"

"Preoccupied. I checked my earlier messages. You should have known better than to live with Syl and Krit. Why did you go back to LA?"

"I had a friend who needed me. I guess I'll be forced to leave him now."

"You can leave him, but you can't leave the girl?"

"You wouldn't understand." I heard a voice in the background ask Zack who he was talking to. "Who's with you? Is that Tinga I hear?"

"Yeah, she was in trouble with Lydecker, now we're on our way to Canada. I just hope you get away from LA as fast as you can. If you have to do it with the girl, then do it, but get yourself away from there."

I pulled into the parking lot of the hotel and turned off the car. "Relax, I'll be leaving as soon as I get Penny ready."

"Who?" Zack's voice sounded strange, as if I'd truly caught him by surprise.

"Penny. That's the girl I'm with. Anyways, do you think Santa Fe will be good enough? Or should I go farther away?"

"What's today?" Now he sounded even more upset.

That had to be the strangest question he'd ever asked me. "Why?" 

"Just tell me."

"Tell me why! What's wrong?"

I heard him put the phone to the side. "Tinga, what's today?"

I wished she wouldn't answer, but she was obviously as clueless as I was about what was going on. "It's January 18th, why?"

"Never mind." He picked up the phone again. "I'm coming down there. Don't go back to your room, just stay where you are."

I didn't have any time to reply before I heard the click from his end of the line. What the hell was going on? He had sounded so ominous, I wasn't sure what to think. I hated it when Zack wouldn't tell me what was going on. Why was he coming? What was so special about today? I was still pondering it as I climbed the stairs to the floor our room was on. I didn't care what he said, I had to get Penny ready to leave and warn her about Zack. 

What in the world is that smell? The first thing it made me think of was Syl from the last time I was near her, but that was impossible. I couldn't help but notice the effect that scent had on my body. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea for me to go in by Penny, I might not be able to stop myself. I moved a little closer to our room, but my body's state just became worse. I actually sat down in the hallway to try and get myself to cool down. God, that smelled so much like Syl's heat cycle. _Who? What day is it? Don't go back to your hotel room._ Zack's voice kept ringing in my head. Penny. Other than it being Tinga's alias, I knew it had some other meaning. 

"Leave her alone!"

"Zack, she's the reason Jondy was taken away to solitary confinement! If she hadn't held us up, Jondy wouldn't have been punished for going on ahead of the group!"

"She couldn't help it! Her body couldn't go through that area, she's not strong enough! You know that!"

I was sitting on a bed, watching Max and Zack scream at each other. We had to go through an obstacle course in the woods, but X5-826 had been going so slow that Jondy had accidentally gone too far ahead. It was supposed to be a group mission, so, needless to say, Jondy had to be punished for straying from the group. Now Max wanted some justice for her sister's punishment, and the first person she wanted to go after was X5-826. Not that I blamed her, I loved Jondy as much as she did and this royally pissed me off, but I also felt that maybe Jondy should have been paying more attention and not daydreaming and wandering too far ahead.

"Just let me at her!" Max growled. Before Zack could stop her, Max had launched herself over a row of beds and grabbed X5-826 by the throat. Zack, Syl, Brin, Jace, and I were the first ones to reach them. Jace and I grabbed Max by the arms and dragged her back, while Syl and Brin stood in front of her to form a physical wall between her and X5-826. Zack went behind her to see if the other girl was alright. Brin stepped between me and Max so that she and Jace could lead her away. I stayed where I was as everyone left the corner, looking down at Zack. He was next to X5-826, checking her throat for any serious damage. Once his head was out of the way, X5-826 looked up at me. We hardly ever saw her, she tended to keep to herself and stay out of our way. We all knew she wasn't supposed to be there, that she probably should have been destroyed, but Lydecker seemed to have a soft spot for her.

Her eyes seemed to pierce me as they looked deeply into mine. They were a stunning green that couldn't be matched, and something behind them almost physically hurt me. I could almost feel her pain. That look told me everything. She knew she was weak, she knew she couldn't measure up to the rest of us. It just seemed to be so painful for her. It was like her eyes were apologizing for the things that weren't her fault. It wasn't until Ben grabbed my arm and whispered that we were going to the High Place that I tore my gaze away from hers. 

I was stunned, I couldn't believe I had forgotten that. I had made myself forget many things about Manticore just so I could try to live a normal life, and some of the other X5s had been forgotten along with the other information. Those eyes. It was those eyes that got me. _X5-826._ Zack hadn't escaped that night. I knew that much. Wasn't it possible that he had let X5-826 out as well? _Her name was Penny. Zack was set on naming her that, but we never called her that. We refused to acknowledge her as anything more than a number because we felt she wasn't deserving of being thought of as more._ Now that I thought about it, it all made sense. Penny had never been able to take care of herself. Zack would have had her live with him. Seeing as how she had shown up at our door, something must have gone wrong with Zack. Maybe whatever that something was was the reason that we had been compromised. 

The smell. That was why Zack was coming here. I wasn't smelling Syl, I was smelling Penny. He knew when her heat cycles were, he must have known she was due. No wonder he sounded so anxious over the phone. There was only one thing I knew for sure, I had to get out of there.

I had no sooner climbed to my feet than I heard the hotel room door open behind me.

*~* Penny

Go away, go away, go away. I had heard footsteps out in the hall, and I was praying every second that it wasn't Jesse, or any man for that matter. My heat was increasing, and the only thing I wanted to do was jump into a pool of ice and stay there for the next couple days. What would happen when Jesse got back? At the moment I could control myself, but there weren't any men by me to test that theory. I was getting the definite feeling that as soon as Jesse was within my line of vision, my virginity wasn't going to last long. _Zack, I need you so much!_ He would have protected me, he would have kept me from jumping the first male that came near me. 

The footsteps out in the hall had stopped, but I wasn't all too sure that whoever it was had gone away. I could still sense them out there. It was taking every ounce of my willpower to stay where I was on my bed and not go over to see who was out there. _Just turn on the TV, I'll be alright._ I grabbed the remote and turned on the TV, hoping to see something to calm my nerves. I saw something alright.

A mans face filled the screen. Well, his eyes anyway. The rest of his face was covered in bars reading STREAMING FREEDOM VIDEO. A moment later, his voice filled the room. "Do not attempt to adjust your set. This is a streaming freedom video bulletin. This cable hack cannot be traced, it cannot be stopped, and it is the only free voice left in this city. This is a message to those known as X5. You've been compromised. You're in danger. You know what to do. I repeat, you've been compromised. You know what to do. This message will repeat every hour on the hour until each of you has checked in."

I couldn't believe it. _I've got to get out of here! _Sorry Jesse, but I had to go. I didn't even bother grabbing anything I'd brought with me, which wasn't much considering that Jesse didn't let me pick up my stuff from Cindy's apartment, and I lunged for the door.

Jesse. Why was he walking away from the room? When he turned and his gaze landed on me, I saw something in his eyes. It was a mixture of horror and disgust. He couldn't possibly know who I was and what was going on. He just couldn't. But his eyes were telling me differently.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked tonelessly, staying as far away from me as possible. "Why would you live with us for so long and not tell us? It's not like we wouldn't have understood. Why did you feel the need to hide yourself from us? Why would Zack hide you from us?"

What? _How does he know about Zack? He couldn't be..._ I didn't have any time to finish the thought, my body was moving without the consent of my mind. I was already halfway down the hallway to him. At first he turned and tried to get down the stairs, but I kicked up my pace. I practically ran him down, but he wasn't complaining when I did. _X5, that's the only thing he could be._ The thought had no sooner ran through my head than it ran back out again. I wasn't in the right state to be thinking at all. 

Jesse didn't try to hold me back as my full weight hit him. In fact, he turned so my back slammed against the wall and then started kissing me. His hands gripped my ribs so hard that I thought I was going to cry out, but my mind was on other things. One of the hands on my ribs moved to slide under my shirt. I knew I was digging my nails too hard into his back, but a part of me wanted to stop this. I didn't want to do this with him. Zack had worked so hard to make sure I remained innocent, why should I destroy that in my first heat cycle away from him?

"What the hell are you people doing? Get in your room!" I managed to turn my head a quarter of an inch to see the old woman standing at the head of the stairs. 

"Fine," Jesse gasped as he pulled his lips off mine. That didn't last long, not even half of a minute later my body was pressed down into my bed, with Jesse tearing at my clothes like a wild animal. As my shirt was torn from me, I nearly made a move to cover myself up out of habit, but Jesse wasn't going to let that happen. I couldn't help but feel scared as he shoved my hands out of the way and kissed me so hard that I whimpered. _This has to stop, I can't do this._ Still, I waited for his hands to unzip my jeans before I really started fighting against him.

"Jesse, please stop! I need you to stop!" I moaned. It probably wasn't very convincing seeing as how I was wrapping my legs around him at the time, but it seemed to reach some part of him.

"I don't think I can," he whispered as he tore my pants down to my thighs. I squirmed weakly in an attempt to stop him from unwrapping my legs so he could completely remove my pants, but he easily finished what he was set on doing. He pulled off his own shirt as I made another attempt to get off the bed, but he finished undressing too quickly for me. As soon as his hands were back on me, I was as good as gone. 

Not even a minute later, I was in sheer ecstasy as a tear slid down my cheek. I was torn in half. My body couldn't get enough of this, but my mind was in agony. _He's an X5. Zack is gonna kill me. _But my mind couldn't stay focused on that as my body neared its first climax ever.

*~* Zane

She was a virgin. I could feel it, I felt her lose her virginity. My body was pretty much a separate being from my mind as I felt Penny's back arch into me as a sharp cry escaped her. Zack had protected her well. Adult female X5 and virgin aren't two things that can usually be said in the same sentence, but Penny had defied that. Well, not anymore. I could taste the tear that had rolled down her cheek. Just like me, her mind was against this. Damn Manticore, they forced us to lose control like this. If only they hadn't screwed around with genetics, we might all be normal people. Then again, we might not exist. We were created from Manticore, so if they hadn't made us we wouldn't be here, normal or transgenic. 

Her tears started coming faster. I forced myself to pull my lips away from hers and stare down into her eyes. What I saw there hit me harder than when we were children. It was almost as if someone had tied a rope to either hand and two people were pulling her in different directions as hard as they could. Although the strain she was feeling wasn't physical, she was having that battle of tug-of-war with her mind. The animal part of her brain was enjoying my presence in her body almost to the point where I wasn't too sure she would let me stop, while her reasoning part was hating this. It wouldn't surprise me if it felt like rape to her. That's almost what it felt like to me too. I know that sounds strange, but the term rape basically means being forced unwillingly into a sexual act, and that's what was going on. 

Time seemed to waste away as our animal instincts refused to release us from their hold. I wasn't even aware of the glowing red numbers on the clock next to the bed anymore. Her tears had eventually ceased, but that was only because her mind had numbed itself to the pain of what was happening. I actually felt bad for her. A part of me hated her for lying to me when I had started to feel something for her, but something else told me that she hadn't been altogether lying to us. I don't think she did the same thing that I know most of the others do. When we relocate, we also tend to take on a different personality. Even stupid little habits are acquired so that we'll seem more normal. I don't think Penny did that. Her personality didn't change at all when she came to live with us. If she was starting to feel anything for me as well, then it wasn't an act.

I was thoroughly exhausted when our bodies finally collapsed against the bed. If it hadn't been for our weariness, we probably would have begun the whole process again in a couple minutes. But, seeing as how we were probably more tired than we'd ever been in our lives, we were both asleep within seconds. The last thing I thought before I slipped out of the waking world was _God, I hope I can live with myself._

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A/N: I know it wasn't as long as my normal chapters, but it all just sort of rushed out of me. The writer's block is definitely gone, but seeing as how ff.net is going to be down for a couple days while it's split into two separate sites, when I make my next update it's going to be shown a couple days earlier on .


	9. Morning After Regrets

Disclaimer: It's mine, mine I tell you! *Ahem* Or not.

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Zack's Penny

By Be Boring

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Chapter 7: Morning After Regrets

*~* Penny

The first thing I noticed when I woke up was the extreme body heat behind me and how good it felt. I immediately felt my heat cycle flare up. It apparently hadn't gone away. I was still a little dazed as I rolled onto my back to look at the man lying behind me. The peaceful, sleeping face of Jesse greeted me, but to my horror. I had hoped it had been nothing but another one of my dreams, but I guess I could never get that lucky. No, what I saw before me was reality, whether I liked it or not.

__

He's an X5. That's the only thing that could have possibly made him react that way to my pheromones. Who is he? I knew perfectly well that since he was an X5, it would be a hard task checking his barcode without waking him up, not to mention that I might lose control again. I was still a little sore, as well as curious, so at the moment I was able to keep myself in check. I wasn't sure how much longer that would hold though.

I moved as stealthily as possible, trying to look over him. No, that was no good, I would have to get too close to see the barcode and I would lose control right along with waking him up. That wasn't what I wanted at all. I slowly slid out of the bed and walked around so I was behind him, then reached down and brushed away some of his hair that was covering the back of his neck. The barcode was only half there, and faded, so it must have been coming back from being lasered off. Still, I could make out at least the first seven digits, along with the last one. _3326800....5._ My eyes widened, my mind had already filled in what I couldn't see. _332680074205; Zane._

My stomach gave an awful lurch. How could I not have realized it? Those sharp green eyes of his, they should have jogged my memory immediately. The dog even was a warning; Zack had told me all about the dogs he always had. How could I have forgotten that? This was almost as bad as incest, without us actually being related. What would Zack say? He had always thought of Zane was one of the more sensible ones, how would he feel to know I fucked him on my first heat cycle on my own? 

The lurch in my stomach came again. This time I couldn't stop it. I lunged for the bathroom and was damn lucky to make it to the toilet before I vomited. Chills ran down my spine, and I almost felt like I had to puke again. _And I always thought it would have just been easier if Zack had taken care of my heat cycle a long time ago. It probably would have been worse than this, if that's possible._

I heard a movement from the bedroom. God, hopefully it wasn't Zane waking up. It was so hard to think of him by that name, I had thought of him as Jesse for so long. What was he doing hanging out with a bunch of ordinaries like that? The answer hit me almost immediately. Miguel and Cindy weren't ordinaries either. Cindy I might not have recognized if it wasn't for the company she kept. Miguel's eyes gave him away as well, I should have seen him for what he was sooner, especially when he threw that pervert from the bar out of the building. Krit. If it wasn't for him being around, I might not have recognized Cindy. She had to be Syl. It made sense that Zane would be with them, he'd want to be as close as humanly possible to his family as long as Zack wasn't showing up. 

Zane was definitely moving around now. I peered nervously out into the bedroom. _He's only moving in his sleep._ I took a deep breath and slowly let it out to relax myself. The heat was really starting to make a comeback. I had to fight it off. That was when my eyes landed on the shower. _That's what I need, an ice cold shower._ It's not like I had to remove any clothes, so I just jumped straight in. The cold water hit me hard, it was like someone had punched me in the gut. I gripped the side of the shower, taking long, slow breaths. At least all thoughts of sex were driven from my mind.

It wasn't too long though before my body adjusted to the temperature of the water and the heat began to make itself felt again. _Damn genetically engineered body. _I had to choice but to turn the water dial all the way round to the other side. Now it was scorching hot. It didn't help my heat, but I knew that once my body adjusted to it then I would be able to turn it back to cold. 

It was still boiling hot when I became aware of movement behind me. I could never have been more grateful for my instincts; before even checking to see who was behind me, I whirled around and sent my fist straight into Zane's nose. He certainly hadn't been expecting that, judging by the ungraceful way he crashed to the floor. Not that it would hold him for long. The pheromones had him beyond thinking. Come to think of it, I was starting to get to that point too.

I immediately turned the water back to ice cold. The shock hit me hard again, but I was much more myself when Zane started to reach for me again. "Get out! Get the fuck out of here! Leave me alone!" I knew I was shrieking loud enough for practically the entire hotel to hear me, but I didn't care. Zane's eyes looked pained as he stepped back into the shower. He could hear me, and he wanted to listen, but his body wasn't letting him. This was the first time I really noticed how much taller than me he was; it was definitely over a foot. I did the only thing that popped into my mind; I grabbed him by the neck, thrust him under the spray of the water, and dove out of the bathroom. I pulled on a bathrobe that was in the closet and lunged for the door to the hallway, then promptly ran into Zack.

I don't know who was more surprised, him or me. As soon as he recognized me, he jumped back against the opposite wall to put some distance between us. Then his eyes nearly fogged over. "What's that smell, Penny?"

Why would he ask that? He knew what it was. "I'm in heat."

He shook his head, his eyes still looking strange. "No, what's that other smell? The one from the room you just came out of."

I turned my head to sniff the air gingerly. That's when it hit me, the whole room smelled like sex. Suddenly, the lurch in my stomach started up again. What was Zack going to say when he found out?

It was already in his eyes. "Zane went back into the room, didn't he?"

I was confused, but I nodded my head. "Wasn't he supposed to?"

"I was on the phone with him. I figured out you were with him, then I remembered your heat cycle was coming up. I told him not to go back into the room, but apparently he didn't listen."

Another voice came from the end of the hallway. "It's not like he could have known, Zack. You didn't tell him the problem. You know how stubborn Zane can be; if you didn't give him a good reason to stay out of his own hotel room, then he wasn't going to listen to you. Who was the one in heat, anyway?"

I turned to see a tall, dark-haired woman at the end of the hall. I struggled to place her face, then it hit me. "Tinga?"

Her eyes landed on me, then I could see the same struggle going on in her mind. "You can't be any of the ones who escaped, Zack told me who they all were," she said after a while.

Zack groaned and rubbed the side of his face with one hand. "Turn around and show her your barcode. She won't remember if I just tell her."

I felt my stomach just get worse, but I still turned around and lifted my wet hair. There was silence behind me as Tinga tried to remember me, then I heard a hesitant "Isn't your name Penny?" I sighed, let down my hair, and nodded. I could feel my heat cycle looming again. It was still being warded off by the aftereffects of my cold shower, but it was going to come back in full force soon. It seemed Zack was realizing that too.

"Tinga, take Penny down to the car and get her somewhere far away from here. Lydecker's men are already combing through this area, it won't take them long to find us."

I walked towards Tinga, struggling to fight back tears. I felt horrible, what did Zack think of me? It just felt strange not to be a virgin anymore. Tinga took my hand and led me downstairs and out into the parking lot.

"You're going to need to get dressed. My clothes might be a little long on you, but they'll have to do for now."

I accepted the jeans and T-shirt that she handed me, then changed in the back seat of the car. My heat cycle was ever present in my mind, but this wasn't the time to dwell on it. I was too uncomfortable around Tinga, seeing as how I was more than aware of how disgusted she was. I don't think she ever thought of her brothers in a romantic way, now to find out that two of her siblings had had a roll in the hay? I know we had a legitimate excuse, but that didn't make it feel any better.

As soon as I was dressed, I hopped into the passenger seat. "Let's go."

*~* Zane

It was half a relief that Penny was out of my sight, and half a torture. The smell of her heat still filled the room, and it left only one thought in my mind. Of course, Zack would try to change that. I couldn't have been happier that he had showed up, but I could sense something bad coming. Did I mention my gut feelings are usually right?

"Why the hell didn't you listen to me?" Zack thundered as soon as he was sure Tinga and Penny couldn't hear us anymore. "I told you not to go into your room, so, what do you do? You go straight into your room! Are you hard of hearing, or just slow on the uptake? You had no reason not to believe me, you simply chose not to."

"I also had no reason to believe you," I grumbled in reply, pulling on my jeans that had been unceremoniously tossed to the floor the night before. "I thought Penny was a normal girl. She had all of us fooled. If you had told me why I shouldn't go in, then I would have listened to you."

"Bullshit, you should have listened anyway. I've never given you false information before, why would you choose to go against me now?"

"What makes you think I always took you for your word before? I take things seriously, as long as I'm sure of what's going on. I didn't see anything wrong with going back to my room. Like I said, I thought Penny was just your average girl. Not that it will make you feel any better, but I wasn't the one that initiated..um..things. When I smelled her heat cycle, I tried to get away, but she opened the door and everything just went downhill from there."

Zack's eyes flashed dangerously. "You're right, that doesn't make me feel any better. It doesn't look like you worked nearly hard enough to get away."

"Dammit, I had no control! You know what those pheromones do! I was as good as gone the second she was too close to me."

"I've gotten away from her before when we were as close as we could get, and as you probably could tell, she was still a virgin!"

What was he trying to do, accuse me of rape? "Of course I could tell. I hope you don't think I tarnished your little secret," I spat bitterly. 

It seemed that remark struck a chord. "You're such an asshole. This has nothing to do with me, I'm not thinking of myself right now. I'm thinking of Penny, and how this will kill her. Even though she was never close to the rest of you, you're all still considered family to her. It will feel like incest. The worst thing is that because she's in heat, I can't comfort her, and I know Tinga's more than a little disgusted by all of this. She's not going to be a great help."

"Tinga's a good person. No matter how much we didn't like Penny in the past, that doesn't hold true now."

"That's only because you've gotten to know her a little better. Tinga hasn't. Penny is still the same person in her eyes."

He had a point. If I had known who Penny was from the get-go, I probably would have done my best to dump her off somewhere. Now though, since I had gotten to know her without knowing who she actually was, I knew better. There was a lot more to Penny that any of us had ever given her credit for. "You don't think Tinga would just leave Penny somewhere, do you?"

Zack frowned, that thought had occurred to him too. "I don't think so. Like you said, Tinga's a good person. She can be tough at times, but she's by no means heartless. Penny's in good hands for the time being."

*~* Penny

"So, how did you end up with my brother?" Tinga asked softly. I could tell it wasn't a friendly question, there was a note of anger in her voice. I also noticed that she referred to Zane as _her_ brother, not _our _brother. Damn, this wasn't going to be an easy trip.

"We both thought the other was an ordinary person. I knew him as Jesse, and he was living with Krit and Syl, who I knew of as Miguel and Cindy. I think Syl went into heat and that's why Zane took me out of the apartment, even though I couldn't figure it out at the time. Then Zane got a call from an old coworker in LA, so he took me along with him. We stopped to spend the night in Ludlow, but he snuck out during the night to go help his friend. That's when I went into heat. When he came back, things just happened. Neither one of us had any control."

Tinga was silent for a while, probably trying to decide if my story was true or not. "What happened to your arm?"

I glanced down. Even though I had torn off the cast while I was in heat before Zane had come back, I was still holding it in the same bent position. It hadn't fully healed yet. "It was broken. It's almost fixed now."

Suddenly, Tinga pulled the car off the road with the tires screeching and parked on the side. "Why the hell would Zack hide you from us? We're family, it wouldn't have hit us as hard if we had found out nine years ago. Now though, it feels like Zack didn't trust us."

"He didn't. Krit and Syl kept sneaking around together while getting into shitloads of trouble, Jondy kept getting involved with wealthy guys, you got married and had a kid, and Max has been seeing Eyes Only and doing missions for him; and that's only the tip of the iceberg. None of you listen to him, how could he possibly trust you?"

Something flared behind Tinga's eyes, I had stepped on a tender nerve there. "What have you done that's made him trust you? You're just a weakling who needs someone to take care of you, what could you have possibly done to make him feel that you're so special? My son's more capable of taking care of himself than you are!"

"If you feel that way, then why are you giving me a ride?" I growled angrily. My temper seems to go through the roof when I'm in heat as well.

"I'm not anymore. I took you a little ways out of Ludlow, now you can make your own way and find a way for Zack to pick you up." With that said, she reached over me and opened the passenger door. The look in her eyes said enough, so I climbed out. I had hardly been out for ten seconds when she slammed the door shut and took off. I stepped further off the road to avoid the other cars, then started scanning the area. I could see a gas station about a mile to the east, so I figured there was no better place for me to go. I could just use a payphone to contact Zack from there.

As I started out feeling more glum than ever, as well as worried in case a man should decide to pick me up, I became aware of a strange noise. Stopping in my tracks and tilting back my head to hear better, I shut out all everyday racket and tuned in to that one particular sound. It was a low rumbling, but it couldn't be thunder because the stars were clearly visible all across the sky. That's when it hit me, it was helicopters. From the sound of it, there was a lot of them. _Manticore._


	10. Decisions, Decisions

A/N: Someone asked why Penny was throwing up. There was no particular reason for that other than how disgusted she felt at what she'd done. I also want to clear up how I feel about Tinga. I know I seem pretty harsh on her in the story, but I'm not trying to portray her as a bad person! She just doesn't like Penny, other than that she's a good person! You'll get to see her better side in the next few chapters that she sticks around, but in this one she's still kind of in the bad guy role. 

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Disclaimer: Not mine.

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Zack's Penny

By Be Boring

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Chapter 8: Decisions, Decisions

*~* Penny

I had kept myself moving despite my nearly paralyzing fear. I was nearly to the gas station now, but the sound of the helicopters hadn't faded away. They were coming closer at an alarming rate, I just hoped I could make it to the gas station by that time. 

Tinga's words still rang in my ears. "_You're just a weakling who needs someone to take care of you, what could you have possibly done to make him feel that you're so special?" _The horrible thing was that she was right. I had been nothing but trouble for Zack, what had possessed him to take care of me for so long? He had so many things to worry about, why add one more thing to the list? And why did I let him take care of me when I knew how much it would hold him back? I'm not helpless, I've just never been given the chance to learn how to take care of myself. Maybe it was time I started. Nothing said that I had to give Zack a call when I reached the gas station. I could just hitch a ride with someone and get out of his life. Wouldn't it be easier on him? Sure, he'd be worried about me for a while, but it would pass. He still had all the others, the ones that had actually been useful to him at times. 

My legs burned a little as I approached the station. Normally a mile walk wouldn't so much as change my heart rate, but I was so sore after my night with Zane that it hurt to do anything physical. Wait a second. I was still in heat, and there was bound to be men in that gas station. What was I going to do if the only person who would take me somewhere would be a guy? I wouldn't last five minutes.

Well, the gas station was bustling when I walked in, and there were just as many men as there were women. I immediately walked over and stood behind a group of college girls who I guessed were just hanging out for the weekend. I listened to their excited chatter for a few minutes, then bought myself a bottle of soda. I thanked my lucky stars that it was a girl behind the counter. I was thinking about going outside and hotwiring the vehicle with the most gas in it, when the college girls' conversation took a more interesting turn.

"Are you sure your parents will be ok with all of us there? I mean, they had no clue you were bringing all of us with you. Will they mind?" a girl with long red hair asked.

It seemed she was talking to the cute little blond, because she was the one who answered. "Are you kidding? They'll be so happy to see me again that they wouldn't care if I brought the whole dorm with me! I guess LA feels like a world away from Denver."

__

Denver sounds just about perfect. I let them talk on a little more, then I stepped forward. "You're all headed to Colorado?"

The blond turned and looked at me, as if making sure I wasn't some lunatic. Not that I blamed her, there are plenty of those out there these days. "Yeah, why?"

"What way are you taking? Are you going down interstate 40, then going up 25?"

"Yeah, we are. Where are you headed?"

Thank God I had lived with Zack for so long, I knew the country as well as I knew the back of my hand. "I'm going to Colorado Springs, but my ride just dumped me. My boyfriend was giving me a ride, but we had something of a fight in the car, so he dropped me off here. Do you guys have room for one more?"

A girl with short, curly dark brown hair stepped forward. "I have room in my car. Do you have any money?"

I ran my hands over my pockets. We had always been taught in Manticore to keep our resources available to us, so a habit I know a lot of the X5s had picked up after our escape was keeping a little bit of money in all of their clothes, then keeping their wallet with them at all times. Tinga no doubt had her wallet, but there had to be a couple dollars in the pants she had given me. I grinned with relief as I pulled five $20 bills out of my left pocket. "Don't worry, I'm set. I take it you want help to pay for gas?"

The girl nodded, rolling her eyes. "The gas stations are vultures nowadays. It's absolutely ridiculous what they'll charge you for gas. I'm Monica, by the way."

"Mandy," I replied, reaching out and shaking the hand that she offered to me. I felt a surge of relief, I just might be able to get out of Zack's life for good, which would be the only good thing I'd ever done for him. I sat with the girls for a while, chatting like I was thirteen and making sure not to reveal anything about myself. It wasn't too hard, they didn't really pry into my past that much. I was starting to get sick of their almost mindless droning when one of the girls stood up and stretched.

"If we don't get moving soon, you'll never get me out of this spot!" The girls all laughed and started making their way out to the parking lot. I just tagged along behind Monica, looking forward to taking a nap and getting my mind off my heat cycle. That's when I was more than a little pissed off when they all suddenly came to a dead halt and cried out in surprise. I stood on tiptoe, but I couldn't really see much. I'm so damn short I still didn't come up to their eyebrows, so looking over their heads was out of the question. I finally just walked around the group, then stood frozen in place.

"God dammit," I muttered. All the tires of the vehicles in the parking lot had been slashed.

*~* Zane

The hotel room had been in almost dead silence for about ten minutes now. As soon as Zack had heard the helicopters, he'd shut off the lights and told me to shut up. The helicopters had only gotten louder ever since, but they didn't seem to be heading directly in our direction. My guess was that they knew we were in the city, but they didn't know exactly where. The problem was that hotels, restaurants, stores, and gas stations would be the first places they would check, then the sewers and warehouses. There would undoubtedly be roadblocks, so leaving town by car would be impossible, and the soldiers marching through the streets would make it difficult for us to get out on foot. Of course, I said difficult, not impossible.

"We're going," Zack whispered, slowly walking over to the door and putting his ear to it.

"What? How do you suggest we do that?"

"You know how Manticore operates well enough, how do you think we're going to do it?"

Dammit, it would be exactly what I was thinking. We were leaving on foot. "Which way are we headed?"

"West. They'll be expecting us to get as far as possible from LA, so I think we should head back that way. That's where they'll have the least security set up."

I finally had to ask the question that was really bugging me. "Where was Tinga taking Penny?"

"I don't know. She was supposed to give me a call once they were out of town to let me know."

"I don't suppose you could check your messages?" I asked grouchily. I wanted to know where the hell Penny was so I could talk to her once she was out of heat.

Zack gave me a look that showed what he thought of my insubordination, but he nevertheless pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number without letting me see what it was. He was smart, he even had all the buttons making the same sounds so I wouldn't be able to tell what the numbers were by ear. He must have thought of that a long time ago. "There's a message from Tinga. You might want to hear it for yourself." His face looked strangely pale as he handed the phone over to me. "Just press star 7."

I pressed both buttons and held the phone up to my ear. I'm sure Zack was aware of the blood draining from my face as I listened to Tinga's message. "Sorry big brother, but I couldn't follow orders as nicely as I'm sure you wanted me to. I dropped Penny off by the side of the road, I'm sure she'll give you a call once she's somewhere with a phone. As for me, I'm headed back home. You have no right to take me away from my husband and my son." 

"What's Tinga's cell number?" I asked in an almost monotonous voice. It seemed that persuaded Zack to listen to me.

"1-487-620-3050," he replied. "Don't be too loud."

I punched in the numbers with trembling fingers, feeling a mixture of rage and fear bubbling up inside me. I was so angry at Tinga for just dumping Penny on the side of the road, not to mention I was afraid for Penny because Manticore was practically crawling all over the place. 

"Zack, you can't change my mind," Tinga growled into the phone. Apparently she had recognized Zack's number on the phone.

"This isn't Zack, it's Zane. Get your ass back here right now and help us get Penny back. Manticore is crawling all over the fucking place, and Penny's just wandering around on the side of the road out there somewhere. I'm not giving an order, but I'm asking as your brother, please come back here and help us."

"God Zane, I didn't know Manticore was there! I'm coming right now. I'm so sorr..." I hung up the phone before she could finish her apology. I knew Tinga wasn't a bad person, she just didn't like Penny, but I couldn't help but be mad at her. Penny could already be on her way back to Manticore because of her.

*~* Penny

__

Manticore did this. I should have known. They would want to be sure no one within a ten mile radius of the city could get away until they were sure there were no X5s there. Soldiers were everywhere; on top of the building, digging through the different vehicles, and trying to keep people away from the parking lot.

Monica was the first to storm forward. "What the hell did you people do to my car? I have somewhere to be very soon, how am I supposed to get there with no fucking tires?"

A horrible electric chill went down my spine as one of the soldiers stepped forward and removed his hat. He was no soldier. His cold blue eyes studied Monica up and down, sizing her up, then he placed a condescending smile upon his face and spoke so gently that you would have thought he was talking to his own child.

"I'm so sorry for this inconvenience, miss, but this is a military operation. Have you seen a young man, about 6'3" in height, with dark brown hair and green eyes?"

"No, I haven't. Now how can I get my tires replaced?"

"You can't, not from here. After we're sure the location is secure, then some of my men will give the stranded citizens a ride into Ludlow where they can call a tow truck to retrieve their vehicle. You'll have to pay for the new tires out of your own pocket." Lydecker said all of this in a very calm manner, but he had just barely finished speaking when a soldier from inside the store walked up to him.

"Sir, the area is secure as far as we can tell. Should we check the necks of all the people in the vicinity?"

Lydecker glanced around at the frustrated people around him, then shook his head. "If there was anyone here we wanted, they'd have left by now in all this mayhem. There's no point." Turning back to Monica, he returned to his fatherly expression. "Now that this area is deemed safe, I can offer a ride as well. I'm headed for Albuquerque, if anyone is headed in that direction."

I thought for a moment. Wasn't Albuquerque close to the intersection between interstates 40 and 25? That would work out perfectly for me. Did I dare to go with Lydecker of all people though? That's when it hit me, Lydecker had no clue what I looked like, or where I was. How would he ever know it was me? Also, I was almost desperate to get as far away from Zack as possible to make his life easier, not to mention I wanted some distance between myself and Zane. I took a deep breath to calm myself, and took a step forward. "I'm headed that way. Could you give me a ride?"

I couldn't help but feel a little sick when he looked me over, but I felt a surge of relief as he offered a half smile and nodded. "Seeing as how you don't look like your average serial killer, I supposed I could give you a ride. Any other takers?" The other girls looked at him with a spark of anger in their eyes, he wasn't going to get them to take him up on his offer. "Well then, let's go."

As I followed along after him, I found myself second guessing my decision. _I'm so sorry Zack, but I have to do it. You'll understand someday._

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A/N 2: Please review! I know there's a lot of people out there who read and don't review, but please write _something!_ It's not just for my story, try and do it for others too. If you don't want to write out a long, detailed review, then just type a couple words! Be it negative or positive, it lets the writer know people are reading! Particularly in The Broken World, you guys have to review more! For people on ff.net who don't know, go to and have a look around. I tried to put that in one of my other chapters, but for some reason my computer kept deleting it out my chapter. Stupid piece of crap. :P


	11. Captured

Disclaimer: I'm a poor beggar woman. Ask no more of me.

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Zack's Penny

By Be Boring

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Chapter 9: Captured

*~* Penny

Ok, can you say _uncomfortable_? Honestly, I thought that with the fact that I was so uncomfortable, my heat cycle would pretty much go into hibernation. Unfortunately, that's not how it works. It doesn't matter who I'm with, my hormones don't let me get away with a thing. _Maybe this wasn't such a good idea._ Don't get me wrong, I never thought it was a first rate idea in the first place, but it would help me accomplish what I wanted to. Now I was getting worried that my heat cycle would make me do something I'd regret for the rest of my life, not to mention letting Lydecker know what I was. I couldn't imagine going back to Manticore now, not when I'd changed so much in the outside world. 

"What's your name?" Lydecker asked. He kept looking at me strangely for some reason. _Relax, there's no way he could know what you are just yet._

I figured it was probably best if I stuck with the name I had come up with back at the gas station. "Mandy."

"You weren't by any chance ever related to Caroline Philips, were you?"

Now he had me completely confused. "No, who is she?"

That seemed to make him uncomfortable. "Nobody important, but you look a lot like her." Then he gave me another one of those looks. It sent a chill down my spine; he was checking me out. He was looking at me almost like you'd look at a long lost lover, it was like he was seeing something I didn't know was there that he did.

"Do I have something on my face or anything like that?"

That seemed to snap him out of his daze. "Um..sorry. I didn't mean to stare, but you really do look like Caroline."

Who was Caroline? That was going to drive me nuts if my heat cycle didn't pull it off first. "Did something happen to her?"

"She's been gone for a while." I got the sense from his tone of voice that I wasn't going to get anymore out of him. Not on this topic anyway.

I turned to stare out the window, struggling to keep my mind off my raging hormones. Why was I so stupid? What drove me to get into a vehicle with Lydecker? It struck me just how close I was to him, maybe two feet between us. I hoped to God that he didn't reach out and touch my arm, that just might send me over the edge. _That would be something to tell Zack. First I fucked our brother, then I went after our worst enemy! Aren't you so proud of me?_ Just the thought of the look on his face made me shake slightly where I sat. 

"Are you alright?" The concern in Lydecker's voice caught me a little by surprise, but not as much as when he laid his hand on my knee. If it wasn't for the fact that I was in heat, this would have seemed to be a moment between father and daughter. I bit my lip to hold back the low groan of frustration that was threatening to come from me. I also balled my hands into fists so tightly that my nails dug into the palms of my hands. It wasn't until I felt a heavy wetness in my hands that I realized I had cut into my skin deeply enough to bleed. 

"I-I'm fine," I stammered helplessly. I felt like a rat in a trap, I had nowhere to go. If he came any closer, I was done for. Literally.

"Are you sure? Your face is completely flushed."

"Just warm," I said quickly, struggling to fight off the feeling that was rising in me. I barely managed to hold back my sigh of relief when Lydecker finally put his hand back on the steering wheel. 

"Crack open a window if you want. I don't mind." Wasn't he being awfully nice when I was only a stranger to him? It must have had something to do with the fact that I looked like that Caroline Philips woman he was talking about. Either way, I was more than happy to open my window. I made sure not to open it too far, but I did open it enough for the blast of chilly air to send several chills down my spine. It wasn't quite as good as a cold shower, but it would have to do for now.

*~* Zane

It probably wasn't the best idea to talk to Zack, but I never usually listen to what the best idea is anyway. "Where are we going to go?"

Like I thought, he wasn't so happy to have the silence interrupted. Thankfully he didn't say anything about it. "Tinga most likely would have been heading up the interstate, so that's probably where she dropped Penny off. If we're lucky, Manticore isn't looking that far out of town yet."

"Wouldn't Penny let you know if she's okay?"

"Not necessarily. She might be ashamed of what happened with you, so she won't want to face me. Not while she's in heat by any means."

"Why would her heat cycle make her think any differently?"

"An X5's hormones go through the roof when they're in heat, and not just sexual ones. Her emotions will be on a roller coaster ride, so she won't be thinking clearly. It might just make her do something she'd really regret."

I didn't have time to think about that one for too long, seeing as how the door swung open and Tinga walked into the room. Her eyes said everything, she really was sorry.

"You guys, you have no idea..." Her voice wavered slightly as she spoke, so she had to break off.

Zack waved it off. "Don't worry about it right now. At the moment our first priority is to find Penny. Where did you drop her off?"

Five minutes later we were outside of town, speeding down the interstate. When Tinga finally pulled over to the side of the road, I pulled over my car as well. I was glad Zack had gone with her, he was too negative for me. I wanted to at least be slightly optimistic at a time like this. "Is this where you left her?"

Tinga nodded, then she crouched down to examine the barely noticeable footprints that had been left in the thin layer of dust at the side of the road. "She went that way." She stood up and pointed to her left, towards what appeared to be a gas station.

Zack frowned thoughtfully. "If she went there, she could have easily called me. There's only a couple reasons she wouldn't." Seeing the look on my face, he made his point a little clearer. "Either her heat cycle got the better of her and she's with a man somewhere, or she's decided not to come back. I don't know which one I prefer."

I could see what he meant. If Penny was with another man, at least the chances were that she was still nearby. If she had decided to run away, at least she wouldn't be feeling any worse than she was already. Of course, she could be doing both. As my eyes studied the gas station from our distance, I noticed something. "The lights are on, but there's no people moving around. I just see two vehicles out there."

Zack and Tinga turned to take a closer look as well. "You're right," Zack muttered thoughtfully. "I can see a red car, but what's the other one? It's in a shadow, from this distance I can't make it out."

Tinga frowned and squinted until I wasn't sure her eyes were open anymore. Then they popped back open so fast that I nearly jumped. "It's a humvee. Manticore's already been there." I saw the look on Zack's face at that piece of news, and I only had a split second to prepare myself for what was coming next. He was going to blame Tinga.

"How could you be so fucking stupid? She's never been on her own, Manticore knows all of our original locations, yet you leave her on the side of the interstate!"

Tinga shrank back slightly, but that didn't hold for long. "I didn't know Manticore was here! This is Ludlow, and even though it's close to LA, it's not part of it! Not to mention they're not looking for Penny here, they're looking for Zane! They have no clue she's even here."

"It's not like that's much comfort right now," Zack growled, moving his face dangerously close to hers. For one strange second he looked like he was going to head-butt her, but then he backed off. It was only then that I saw the pained frustration in his eyes. _He really cares about her. This is tearing him apart._ I just wished I could do something.

"Where do you think she would have headed?" I asked finally, trying to take Zack's mind off the image of Penny in Manticore.

He bit his lip for a moment, then looked up the interstate. "She would have hitched a ride with someone, and most people who travel by interstate will stick to it as long as possible. She also would have just asked to be dropped off in a big place, so she can go off in any direction she wants."

"Ok, so let's just stick with the interstate thing for now. What possible routes could she have taken?"

"Even if she kept going east, there's a lot of choices she had. There would be no way to pinpoint where she is."

I could feel a strange helplessness washing over me. Penny had lived with Zack for so long that she would know her way around the country and exactly how to hide herself to the point where even Zack might not be able to find her. "You said she would probably go to a big city and move on from there. What big cities could she get to by going eastward on interstates?"

"If they connect directly off this, then the closest ones for her to get to would be Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and Denver, but they're all capitals, so that wouldn't be the best idea. Albuquerque, Las Vegas, and Colorado Springs are a couple others. But that's just in the next few states, she could go anywhere in the country if she finds the right person to hitch along with."

Tinga studied the many vehicles passing us by. "If she hitched with a truck driver from here, then she'd probably end up in Albuquerque, there's a lot of business between here and there."

I sighed. "I don't know about you guys, but that's where I'm headed. It's as good as we've got."

*~* Penny

"We're here," came Lydecker's voice quietly as he shook my leg gently to wake me up. I groaned and twisted in my spot, making a show of being tired and wanting to stay sleeping. I couldn't just snap awake and be ready to go, that wouldn't seem natural. I hadn't meant to doze off, but I wasn't able to help myself. I was so relaxed with the cool breeze blowing over my face that I let myself fall off. 

"I guess this is goodbye then. Thanks for the ride, you have no idea how much I appreciate it." Before he could say anything, I slid out of the truck and walked away across the parking lot. He had parked by a mall, so I'm guessing he just didn't want me to know where he was going. Not that it bothered me, I was just happy to be away from him. It didn't take me five minutes to pick out the nearest hotel and head to it. If I could just get myself into a room alone, I'd be just fine.

"Are there any rooms available?" I asked breathlessly as I ran up to the desk. The teenage boy behind the desk raised an eyebrow at my hectic behavior, but he nodded. 

"Yeah, there's a couple rooms. It's twenty bucks."

I couldn't help thinking that was kind of cheap, but people had been forced to cut prices drastically after the Pulse. I just shoved a twenty into his hand and took the key he offered me before my body could change my mind, then I took off down the hallway. I glanced down at my key as I ran. _Ok, room 25. Once I make it there, I'll be fine._

I had just turned the corner when I came to a crashing halt. I had run smack dab into a tall young man, one who was particularly well built. I couldn't help but gape as I stepped back. Black hair, rich brown eyes, and dimples. What girl could ask for more? The problem was that he was looking at me funny. In fact, he was starting to back away from me.

"You weren't supposed to be along on this mission. Why are you here?"

I froze in my tracks. What was that supposed to mean? That's when a young woman stepped out from behind him. She looked to be of Asian descent, with long black hair pulled back into a ponytail, and shrewd brown eyes that seemed to burn through me. I was so shocked to see her that I wasn't prepared for her when she tackled me. 

"State your designation, soldier!"

I couldn't help but get a dig in. She knew what I was, so why hold back? "C'mon Brin, you know better than that. We don't go by designations anymore out here."

Her eyes widened slightly, but the look of shock faded so that anyone who had blinked wouldn't have been able to tell you that she'd shown a shred of emotion. Her eyes searched deep into mine but they didn't appear to find anything. Then she grabbed me by the hair and pulled my head forward. I felt her body tense up as she read the barcode, then I saw her gesture to one of the other X5s that had walked out of the room. I couldn't see what she had motioned for her to do, but I pretty much guessed what it was when my world went black.


	12. So Much To Do, So Little Time

Disclaimer: I own nothing even related to DA. No posters, clothes, merchandise of any kind, and I haven't even preordered any DVDs. Believe me when I say I don't own the show.

****

Zack's Penny

By Be Boring

****

Chapter 10: So Much To Do, So Little Time

*~* Zane

Obstinate. That's the only word I can come up with to sum up what Zack is today. He refused to even hear of me going to Albuquerque. That's why I'm headed there now without him. I know he's not going to be too happy when he wakes up and realizes that I'm gone, but I can't worry about what he's going to think. The only thing that I can think about is getting to Penny. I know she's smart, but something in my gut tells me she's with Manticore, and like I've said before, my gut is usually right. 

__

"She's not so stupid as to go even closer to Manticore! Knowing her, she probably would have gone to Mexico. It would be the logical thing to do!" Zack snapped angrily. He was quickly losing his temper with the way Tinga and I kept badgering him. 

"That's always your line of thought: as soon as something goes wrong, get the hell out of the country!" Tinga growled. "Well, some of us don't think like that. Didn't it ever occur to you that it would actually be wiser _to get close to Manticore? That's something they would never expect, they would have moved their search further away and you could live right under their noses. Just because Penny lived with you all those years doesn't mean you two share the same thought process."_

"I think I would know more about what goes on in my sister's mind than you do," came Zack's dark reply. Uh oh, he was getting quiet. The big explosion would come soon if we didn't stop this. 

"You know, I might know more about her than either of you," I said as calmly as possible. Perhaps if I made it sound logical, then Zack would calm down a little. "After all, Tinga, you don't know Penny at all. Zack, she might have hid herself from you. I know you don't intend for it to be that way, but the easiest way to get along with you, and most likely live with you, is if we just shut up and agree with everything you say. That doesn't necessarily mean that we actually agree, just that we don't want to fight. How do you know that Penny wasn't stringing you along for years, agreeing with everything you said just so she could avoid any confrontation with you? That would be extremely wise on her part, and she struck me as an intelligent person when I met her. As much as I know you'll hate to hear it, what happened last night might have happened with or without her heat cycle. That's how close we were getting. I got to know quite a bit about her personality while I was with her, and I don't think she's the type to just run out of the country when the red flag goes up. She would stick around and fight it out, otherwise I don't think she'd be able to live with herself."

Ok, logical wasn't the way to go with Zack, that much was obvious from the way his nostrils were flaring. "How dare you tell me that you think you know Penny better than I do. I lived with her for nine years, doing everything with her. I should know her better than anyone else!"

I was going to shoot something back when Tinga grabbed my arm and motioned for me to follow her. Zack didn't even look at us as we walked out into the hallway. "You're not going to get through to him, that's just the way he is. If you want to get to Penny, you're going to have to do it yourself."

"Sure, and I'll set up an X5 reunion in Manticore while I'm at it. You know, that just might happen anyway! This is ridiculous, if I run off he's just going to follow me."

Tinga rolled her eyes. "Oh please, you underestimate the power of a woman. I'll keep him distracted."

I couldn't help but feel a little nervous at that. "What do you mean by 'the power of a woman'? You're not going to..."

Her eyes widened in shock. "No! What would make you think that? No, I'm just going to start a fight with him. A woman knows how to keep a man going in one of those when it suits her purpose, and in this case, it does. I can't believe what I did."

"Neither one of us blames you. So, how am I supposed to get out during this fight?"

"I'll make sure it happens later tonight, when you're already in bed. I'll start the fight, and you'll just sneak out the window while he's yelling. He won't even know you're gone until morning."

She let out a slightly surprised squeak when I threw my arms around her and squeezed her tightly. Sometimes my sisters could be the most brilliant people in the world.

That plan had gone even smoother than I'd expected it to. I got out without a hitch, and Tinga called me later after Zack was asleep to let me know he didn't suspect a thing. I just wished there was a way that she could have come along with me. All of my sisters are the best source of comfort I have, not to mention how good they can be in a situation like this. Well Tinga was out, and Jondy probably would have been forced to move as well. _Hey, what day is it? Syl might be out of heat by now._ Today was the 20th, it had to be over by now. Penny's would be ending soon, so Syl had to be done. Hopefully she could come with Krit, that would make things a whole lot easier. I was in such a hurry that I nearly dropped my cell phone while I was dialing.

"Hello?"

"Syl, are you out of heat?"

"Zane? Where have you been? We figured you'd be at your place, but when we went to check we couldn't find you. Where are you?"

"I'm on my way to Albuquerque, where are you guys?"

"Tulsa. Do you need our help?"

"Yeah, more than you'll ever know. I don't want to tell you over the phone, but could you get to Albuquerque as soon as possible? Bring Krit with you, we have a major problem on our hands."

*~* Penny

I groaned as I rolled over onto my back. Why was I so cold? There was the faint burning in my middle that reminded me of my heat cycle, but it was much weaker. It seemed I was going back out of heat, but it didn't seem like I had been in it that long. I tried to do the math in my head. I'd gone into heat the night of the 18th, slept with Zane and ran off on the 19th, and ran into Brin at about noon that day. I glanced up at the bars of my tiny cell. I was at the edge of the building, so sunlight was trickling in. It seemed to be the middle of the day, but that was impossible. That would either mean that I'd only been out a few minutes and was already back in Manticore, or I had been out for twenty-four hours. The last one seemed more likely. They must have kept me drugged, otherwise I would have woken up a long time ago. 

"She's awake," came a rather blank voice from outside the door. Damn, I didn't want to have a confrontation with anybody just yet. I felt like crap; my heat cycle was ending, my head hurt from getting knocked out, and I was freezing my ass off. That's not the way I like to receive company. My headache got about ten times worse when I saw who my visitor was.

"None of you has ever truly impressed me, but you've changed that. You were right next to me, in heat no less, and you had me completely fooled. You offered to ride with me to get to where you wanted to go. I don't think any of the others would have dared to do that." Lydecker almost had a fatherly look as he sat down in a chair on the opposite side of the room. 

I just smirked up at him and moved up the sit on the coverless bed that was in the cell. "Am I supposed to feel honored? I don't work to impress you anymore."

That only seemed to amuse him. He smiled slightly and tilted his head to the side. "You've lived with Zack for too long, you've developed some of his attitude. I never would have expected that from you."

"I've done a lot of things that you wouldn't have expected. Yesterday was just the tip of the iceberg." I think my voice gave away something more than I intended, his eyes flashed with an almost triumphant look.

"You've been having a very bad couple of days, haven't you? We've been busy while you were asleep. The gynecologist says that you lost your virginity in the last forty-eight hours, and DNA tests with semen we found proves it was an X5. We're doing further testing to find out who it was, but it would be easier if you would just tell us."

"I don't plan on making anything easy for you," I spat. It disgusted me that a doctor had been violating my body, even if it was a medical procedure. Having anyone touching me intimately while I was unconscious wasn't an appealing thought.

"That's your choice, but what's easier on us will be easier on you in the long run. We want your reprogramming to go as smoothly as possible." He didn't even give me time to process that comment, he was out the door before another word could be said. A horrible chill flooded through me. That was exactly the effect he wanted his words to have on me, he wanted to scare me. I couldn't let him win, I had to beat it. I could make it through the reprogramming, I was almost sure of it. It was just the thought that Zack might not even know I was here. How would I stand a chance of getting out without him? When I heard the door open again, I thought that it was Lydecker coming back in. If only.

"Enjoying your stay? I tried to make the room as comfortable as possible," Brin said snidely as she came in and took the chair that Lydecker had vacated. 

I smiled sweetly at her. "Of course. You were so kind as to remove the blankets from the bed completely, and not even set me on it while I was unconscious. I greatly appreciate everything you've done for me." The sarcasm in my voice had a bite to it, but it did nothing more than elicit a sneer from her.

"You're lucky that Lydecker's been having a long few days. Ever since Zack slipped up to Max where half of you were, he's been busy going out and finding all of you. He hasn't been very successful other than catching you, and it's starting to run him ragged. If he wasn't stretched so thin, he would have recognized you."

"How? It's not like he's seen me in the last nine years. He has no clue what I look like."

Now Brin took on a rather condescending smile. "That's where you're wrong. He told one of the officers earlier that he had been giving a ride to someone who looked a lot like Caroline Philips. Do you even know who she is?"

"How am I supposed to know?" I growled. I just wanted her to go away and leave me alone. If they were going to try and reprogram me, then I had to be rested up and ready to fight it.

"I'll make it easy on you. She was his wife. Philips was her maiden name. You see, Lydecker did a rather selfish thing when he created us. He wanted to keep his wife alive in some way, so he got permission to do a little something special with two female X5s in the making. He figured he'd be training us for most of our lives, so he wanted to do something to make that time more enjoyable. He slightly configured the DNA of one X5 to have Caroline's eyes, then he made one to have her features. You're the second one. Your face and body shape are complete replicas of his wife's. The only differences are that she was a darker brunette and had large brown eyes. If he wasn't so rattled after all the time he'd spent without sleep, he would have realized who you were. You look too much like Caroline to be anything but the X5 he made to look like her."

That was news to me. It was kind of disgusting to think of what he might have done if he had known I was in heat at the time. Would he have tried to relive some memory of being with his wife? Just the thought made me shudder. Brin was watching my face almost like a predator watches its prey. She had been trying to initiate that exact idea in my mind about Lydecker, I just couldn't let her know that it had worked.

"Do I have something on my face?" I asked almost politely. That irked her a little, but I got the feeling she wasn't done yet. So much for getting some rest.

*~* Zane

The problem with going into a large city like Albuquerque is that there's no way to know where to start. I didn't know if I should start with the hotels, the malls, the clubs, or even the local pharmacies. Where would she go? Was she even here? I had come straight into town on the interstate, and the first place I had pulled off next to was a mall. After about fifteen minutes of wandering through it, I decided she probably wasn't in there. The problem was where to start looking next. 

"Well, why not? It can't be any less possible than the other places around here," I grumbled to myself as I crossed the street to enter the nearest hotel. There was a teenage boy standing behind a counter, chewing gum and flipping through what appeared to be a Playboy magazine. I had to bang the bell on the counter a few times and wave my hand in front of his face before he noticed me. "Has a young woman checked in lately?"

The kid's eyes widened. "You haven't heard? No one's checked in here since yesterday. There was a military thing going on, they dragged out someone who I guess was trying to hide here."

I could feel my stomach dropping. "Was it a young woman? Just short of five feet, curly brown hair, big green eyes, very pretty?"

"Yeah, I think so. She was in one hell of a hurry when she got in here. As soon as I gave her the key to her room, she took off down the hall. It wasn't a minute later before I heard some yelling, something about a soldier, then they dragged her out of here. They told me she was a fugitive, and ever since that got out nobody's come in here. I think they're scared it will happen again."

__

So they do have Penny. Thank God Syl and Krit are coming. I had no sooner thought that as I was walking out to my truck before someone grabbed my shoulder. I couldn't help but grin with relief as Syl's bright face stared up into mine.

"What's going on, little brother?"

I gave her a quick hug and slapped Krit on the back. "It's kind of a long story, I'll tell you on the way, but for now all you need to know is that we're going to Manticore."

*~* Penny

Brin seemed to not want me to get any sleep. That was the only reason I could come up with for why she was talking so much. I know it's not because she enjoys my company. "I figured it was my duty as your _sister_ to warn you about your reprogramming. I know what you're thinking, I can see it in your eyes. You think you'll find a way to beat it, somehow retain part of the person you've become in the outside world. Just to let you know, it isn't going to happen. I thought the exact same thing, but it wasn't until afterwards that I realized how futile it was. What's the point of fighting the inevitable? All they're going to do is revert you back to what you really are, a soldier. In the end, you'll thank them for it. You'll be happy to be rid of all those weaknesses you developed while you were out of training. You'll even reach the point where you'll beg to be taught everything you've missed."

"Like hell I will," I replied angrily. "They've changed you already, so you don't see the foolishness in your words. The traits that we picked up when we were out of here only make us stronger. What do you think you're likely to fight harder for: something that you've been forced to do or something like that really means a great deal to you? Personally, I would pick the second one. We'll take Zack for example. I would fight like hell to keep him safe, but if I was ordered to fight for something else that my heart wasn't a part of, then it would be an entirely different story. I'd fight, but without the same vigor."

"You'd lose either way. You're a weakling, not even training with Manticore will change that."

"I've got my strengths."

Brin rolled her eyes. "I doubt that."

A knock on the door pulled her attention away from me for a moment. "X5-826 is to be brought for rehabilitation immediately."

I couldn't help but laugh. "Rehabilitation? That's what they're calling it? Why don't they just be honest and call it brainwashing?"

Brin clenched her jaw and walked over to me to grab me roughly by the arm. "Call it whatever you wish, but I can guarantee that you're not going to enjoy your time in that room."

***********************************************************

Author's Note: Now I'm going to be devoting my typing time to yet another history report. It's the last one of the year, so after that I shouldn't have anything to worry about other than my semester exams, but those are a couple months away. I'm hoping to update this sometime next week or the week after that, so don't be surprised if I don't update for a while. :( I hate history.


	13. Strategy

Author's note: Yay, I'm done with my report! I finished it a couple days ago, and I got 100% on it! Woohoo! Um...ahem...okay. I'm good, I'm calm. WOOHOO!!!!! Umm, okay, I just hope you like the chapter.

Disclaimer: This computer isn't even mine. There's no way I own DA.

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Zack's Penny

By Be Boring

****

Chapter 11: Strategy

*~* Penny

Brin wasn't kidding when she said I wasn't going to like this room. There was nothing in it except for the chair I was sitting in, what was obviously a two-way mirror, and a projector. This would later flash different words on the wall to reprogram me after I was broken, but I didn't plan to let it go that far. My eyes quickly detected the speakers that were built into the wall. What were they going to do, break me by boring me to death with their endless droning? That possibility was forced from my mind when they strapped me to my chair. I could see the cord running from my seat, this was meant to give me electrical shocks.

"State your designation." A strange woman's voice filled the room, seeming as though it was coming from all around me.

"I'm Penny," I replied coldly. I stared straight into my own reflected eyes in the mirror, not letting one touch of emotion escape into my face. A low mechanical buzz could be heard from under my seat, then the shock hit me. Still not letting any expression cross my face, I let my mind wander to scenes from my time with Zack. Something in me told me he would come for me, he would never leave me for them to have. _He left Brin,_ a nagging voice insisted from the back of my mind.

"State your designation."

"Penny!" I snapped. When the shock hit, I was more prepared for it. It was slightly stronger though, they evidently weren't going to keep it at the same voltage. 

"State your designation, soldier!" This time it wasn't that woman's voice, it was Lydecker's. 

"Fuck you!" I yelled at the mirror. That has to be the most gutsy thing I've ever done, but it was going to cost me dearly. Lydecker apparently didn't like my response, so the shock was much more severe. It took a lot of willpower for me to keep from cringing. After the pain in my body faded, I forced a very Zack-like sneer. "What, wasn't that the answer you were looking for? I know you thought about it."

There was silence for nearly a minute. That last comment had definitely struck a nerve with him. When the speakers sounded again, it was the woman who spoke. "State your designation."

"I don't have one. I have a name, and I've already told you what it is." My voice was nearly a growl now. This time the shock was like an explosion inside my body, it came everywhere at once. My temples throbbed, my breath caught in my throat, and every muscle in my body flexed to its extreme. Still, I managed to keep any pain from registering on my face. I wasn't about to give them that satisfaction.

"State your designation, or we'll use every bit of power that chair has to offer."

I glared at my reflection. "Go right on ahead. I'm ready for it." In the split second I had before the shock, I let my mind almost completely shut down. My face and body position didn't change, but I had closed myself off. It was something I had learned to do a long time ago when I got hurt, it was like going into a coma. When the shock hit me, I barely felt it. My body jerked naturally against the restraints, but my senses were safely protected within the confines of my all-too-complex mind. It lasted for nearly a minute, which would have made anyone else pass out, but after it was over I simply dragged myself back to reality and stared confidently into the mirror. I was perfectly aware of the soreness that was present in my body, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I'm sure the shock was.

"That didn't work nearly as nice as you thought it would, did it? If that was all the juice this baby had, what else do you have to offer?" I asked sweetly. Even though the woman seemed to be good at staying calm, I was sure that Lydecker was fuming. He'd always considered me to be weak, but this was throwing off his beliefs. Sure, I was physically weaker than my family, but mentally I could hold my own.

"Your heat cycle is still in the process of ending. We still have our shot at breaking you," came the woman's cold, hate-filled voice. I felt my stomach drop, but I refused to let it show. I was strong enough to at least defend my body, there was no way I was going to let them get away with doing anything to me.

*~* Zane

I don't think I've ever heard such complete silence while I've been with Krit and Syl. Ever since telling them the truth about Penny, neither one has said a word. Syl just keeps staring out the window, while Krit just keeps studying his hands. I knew it was going to hit them hard, but I didn't think they'd react _this_ strongly. I mean, even _I_ didn't get so upset! I'm the one who slept with her!

Syl was the first to speak up. "Zane, did she know who we were?"

"I honestly don't know. I don't think she did, I got the impression off Zack that she had no interest in ever seeing any of us again. If she knew who we were, I think she would have left, especially with her heat cycle coming up."

"Please, I doubt her heat cycle's been a big deal. Zack's probably been taking care of it ever since it started," Krit growled bitterly. I guess he didn't like being lied to.

"No, she was never with Zack. She was a virgin before her heat cycle, I could feel it. That's one of the main reasons I want to see her again."

Krit just rolled his eyes. "You've slept with plenty of girls before, why should Penny be special?"

I felt my temper rising, but Syl answered before I could. "Because for one thing, she considers us family. It's probably something like incest for her. Also, it's not easy losing your virginity by means of a heat cycle. I remember my first time, it ended up being with some drunk from a bar that I didn't even know. I felt helpless, it was so much like rape because it's something I never would have done of my own free will, but I couldn't blame the man either. It's not his fault I came into heat. I was frustrated over what had happened, but there was no one to turn to and no one to blame. That's probably exactly how she's feeling right now."

There was silence for another couple minutes, then Krit spoke up again. "So, how are we getting her out of there?"

I felt a rush of relief flow through me. "You're definitely going to help?"

Now he grinned at me. "I think Zack would kick my ass if I didn't. Besides, I want to talk to her too. I have a few questions I want answered."

"Well, as long as you're with us, I think we'll just have to see what we're up against first. We have no idea how much the security at Manticore has changed since we were there, things could be a hell of a lot tougher now. I'd like to try and get a message to Penny, and maybe get one back from her. Seeing as how she's inside, she might be able to give me a little more information than what I can see."

Syl frowned thoughtfully. "How do you plan on getting a message to her? I doubt they have a post office in there."

"That's why I want to see the place first. I'm just hoping that all three of us won't have to go in, it would be that much harder to get everything done if we were in a group."

"Why isn't Zack here?" Krit asked finally.

"Because he doesn't think they have her, and I don't think we'll be able to convince him of it. I think it would be a blow to his pride if he knew that someone who'd lived with him for so many years had been caught. Besides, I'm not sure if he'd be able to think straight and actually form a plan. I've never seen him more protective of any one of us. He might not act rationally."

Krit snorted. "That would be a first for him. Is he really that hung up on her?"

"I don't think he feels that way about her, but they're very close. If any two of us were actually blood related, I think it would be those two."

We lapsed back into silence for a while, each one of us dreading our return to Manticore. Perhaps it was because we so far away from reality that we all were so startled by a phone ringing. I knew for a fact that wasn't my phone, my ring was completely different.

Syl's hands shot into her back pockets, first dragging out her wallet, then her ringing cell phone. "Hello?" She cringed as a very outraged voice came over the line. She turned and mouthed _It's Zack_ as she held the phone away from her ear. I reached over and snatched it out of her hands.

"Upset that I got away from you?"

His heavy breathing was a sure sign of how angry he was. "Are you insane? I figured you'd be right back with those two, putting them in as much danger as you'll be in. Where are you going?"

"Where do you think? I happen to know for a fact that Manticore has Penny, and I'm going to get her out. You can catch up if you want, but otherwise just leave us the hell alone." With that, I hung up the phone and smashed it against my door. At Syl's cry of protest, I snapped "I'll buy you another one later. I just don't want him calling back. Krit, if you have a cell phone you might want to do the same thing."

I heard a bit of grumbling, but he eventually pulled out his phone and crushed it. "You're buying me a new one too. I liked this phone."

I was about to shoot back a sarcastic remark when a sign overhead caught my attention. WELCOME TO GILLETTE. "Get ready, we're almost there."

*~* Penny

I had the feeling as Brin dragged me back to my room that I was going to have company. Who would they send? If it was just an X5 I didn't know then I might be able to handle it, but what if it was someone I recognized? I wasn't sure if I could deal with that. Judging by the smirk on Brin's face, she knew who was waiting for me.

I felt some relief as I entered my room and didn't see anyone, but then the door slammed shut behind me and rushed footsteps were all too clear. I managed to shoot to my left just in time to avoid being tackled by someone who was quite obviously an X5. I whirled around to get a good look at him, but found myself having to run again as he came hurtling towards me. I grabbed the chair that Lydecker and Brin had used and threw it at him. Luckily, my aim was dead on and he was sent against the wall. Now I had time to see him.

He was probably around 5'11", with black hair and a perfect blend of blue and brown in his eyes. I guessed he had some Hispanic blood in him, he vaguely resembled Krit. Then again, Krit never looked quite that frightening. The X5 stood up and wiped the blood off his chin where part of the chair had caught him, then his eyes landed on me again. My heat cycle was fading, there was no way my scent could be doing that to him. It seemed that Manticore had just sent me one of their most insane men to break me. Preparing to roll out of the way once again, I couldn't help but be a little scared. I couldn't just keep avoiding him forever, I would have to put him out of commission somehow. The scary thing was that I wasn't sure I was capable of doing that, he was obviously much stronger than me. 

As I lunged out of his way yet again, I clasped both of my hands together and hit him in the back as if I was using a club. It had the effect I had wanted, it knocked the breath out of him. As soon as he hit the wall, I shot forward, grabbed a handful of his hair, and slammed his head against it. His unconscious body slumped to the floor, and I dropped onto the bed wearily. I couldn't believe I had done that, but I knew it wasn't likely to happen again. I had simply caught him by surprise. Manticore had probably told him that I wasn't much of a fighter, and I had probably confirmed that by continuously running away from him. 

Taking one more good look to make sure he wasn't going to come back to his senses any time soon, I let myself flop out on my back on the bed. I was incredibly tired, I wasn't sure if I'd ever been as exhausted. Most likely the effects of the drug they had used to keep me asleep for the past twenty-four hours hadn't quite worn off yet, and on top of that I was fighting someone twice as strong as me. My eyes hadn't been shut for more than a minute before a sudden noise from my window caused me to sit bolt upright. I raised myself onto my knees on the bed and glanced out the window, then nearly fell backwards onto the floor.

"What are _you_ doing here?"

*~* Zane

Manticore still looked the same to me, it was as if I had never left. I felt a chill run through me as I stared at it, and I have no doubt that it did the same to Krit and Syl. The only difference I could detect was the vast increase in cameras that were on the outside of the building. We were safe in the trees at the moment, but I knew that in order to find Penny we would have to move around, which would probably get us spotted.

I turned to Krit and whispered, "You can still do good bird impressions, right?"

He shrugged. "I haven't done any in a long time, but I probably still could."

"Syl?"

She nodded. "Krit taught me, and I'm pretty sure I can still do it."

"Good. We'll spread out to look for Penny. I'll go to the north end, and you guys go to the east and west. If you don't see anything, head to the south. If I don't see anything, I'll meet you there later. If either of you guys see her, make three bird calls. I don't care which ones, just do whichever you think you could manage the best. If I find her, I'll make three whistles. I know that will draw more attention, but I can't do bird calls worth shit."

Once we were all spread out, Krit going east and Syl going west, my eyes never left the building. The cameras rotated in their spot, so every time they were pointed away from me I would move as far as I could before one turned back. If I waited until every last one of them was in a perfect position, I could make it past three or four of them in one shot before I had to stop. As soon as I was on the north end, I slowed down and really started to study the building. This appeared to be the regular cells of the other X5s, none of them seemed to strike me as a holding cell. Once I was pretty sure that she wasn't over there, I started to head down the east side to get to our southern meeting point, then I heard three sharp crow cries coming from my right. They sent chills through me, but I knew that had to be Syl. _It_ _figures she would use the one call that would scare the crap out of me._

As soon as I was far enough along the west side that I could see her, I started keeping a very close eye on the cameras. It would be much harder to make it to the building than to just run along it. Krit and I reached Syl at about the same time, then we followed her finger. On the second floor, between two large electrical boxes on the outer wall, was what was obviously a holding cell. I could hear some scuffling, then I saw Penny flash past the window. My stomach tightened when I saw that a male X5 was right behind her. 

"You guys keep a lookout, I'll go talk to her."

As Syl and Krit positioned themselves perfectly to keep an eye out for soldiers, I waited for the two nearest cameras to be pointed away, then shot forward. When I was about seven feet from the building, I jumped up and grabbed the bars of Penny's window. The electrical boxes were large enough for me to remain hidden from the cameras or any prying eyes from the side. Pulling myself up to see into the room, I was stunned to find myself face to face with Penny.

"What are _you_ doing here?" she gasped. It seemed as though I had scared her half to death.

"What do you think? I'm getting you out. Krit and Syl are here too, they're right back there." I gestured with my head towards them, then peeked inside the room to see where the other X5 was. To my relief, he was lying on the ground next to the left wall. "Look, I don't have a lot of time. I want to get you out, but I'm not exactly sure how. It'll be tough enough to get to you."

She frowned for a second, then her eyes lit up. "Wait for tonight. It's been cloudy all day, so it'll be pitch black tonight. Find a way to turn off the electricity, and I can handle myself from there. Meet me in the main hall that led to the old training room."

I was confused, how did she think she was going to get out in the dark? Still, I had to trust her. She looked as though she knew what she was talking about. "Fine, that's what we'll do. Are you okay? What is that guy doing in here?"

At that she smiled ruefully. "After they couldn't get me to be submissive by shocking me, they decided to send in an X5 to break me by means of my heat cycle. I'm not that far in heat anymore though, so I was able to catch him off guard. I think it took him by surprise when I knocked him out."

I could have laughed at the thought of what he must have been thinking. Then I did something that caught even me by surprise, I reached in and grabbed Penny with one hand, pulled her forward, and kissed her. It wasn't from the faint smell of her heat cycle, that wasn't affecting me anymore. I just had the sudden urge to do it. It made my mood brighten a little when she kissed me back, but I knew I couldn't hang there forever doing this, no matter how tempting it might be. As soon as I pulled back from her, I glanced at the cameras then dropped back to the ground and ran across to the fence where Krit and Syl were waiting. After that kiss, I was even more determined to get her out.

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Author's Note 2: Please review! I love hearing from you guys! There's no better way to brighten up my mood. :)


	14. Sibling Rivalry

Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing. I'm too poor to own anything.

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Zack's Penny

By Be Boring

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Chapter 12: Sibling Rivalry

*~* Zane

"What do you want us to do?" Krit asked, finally voicing the golden question of the day. Penny had told us to knock out the electricity, but how did she expect us to do that? I didn't remember where the computer room was that managed the power, and even if I did, surely they had to have backup generators. 

"We have about two hours before sunset. We may as well go scope out Manticore and see if they have any generators that we could get to easily. Once we're sure we've found them all, it'll be your guys' job to destroy them after I've turned off the power."

Syl wasn't too happy about this. "Are you trying to tell us that you're going in there alone? Oh hell no, there's no way I'm letting you do that. I'm going in there with you. Krit can handle the generators."

"No, it'll only be harder if there's more than one of us going in, especially seeing as how there's hopefully going to be two of us coming back out. If we add one more to the group, things will only get more difficult."

Krit stepped forward to put a hand on Syl's shoulder, then turned to me. "Zane, I see where you're coming from, but this is a suicide mission. We won't even know if you're in trouble. Don't you see how dangerous it would be for me and Syl to be sitting out here while you're getting your ass thrown in a cell? We'd be caught too."

"Not if you leave right after you've destroyed the generators. Listen, as soon as your job is done, I want you guys to get the hell out of here. Get to the truck and drive past Manticore at," I glanced at my watch, "2100 hours. If we come up onto the road, then pick us up. If you don't see anything, just drive past again about ten minutes later. If you still don't see us, then you'll know we failed and I want you to leave. If you're set on another rescue mission, then get Zack. He's on his way anyway."

I could tell Syl still didn't like my plan, but she could also see that I was set on doing this. I saw her shoulders slump slightly in defeat. "Fine, but I might just do that second rescue mission myself. Then if I get caught, I can chew your ass out for being so stupid." She offered a tiny smile, and my heart lightened up right then. It felt good to have support.

I glanced up at the sky. "We don't have much time, let's go."

*~* Penny

I wasn't really sure what to do, laugh or cry. My emotions were going haywire as the sun was setting. The X5 on the floor was starting to move around more, he would be waking up soon. I was trying to save myself for running, but if I fought with him then I might wind up being spent. I had only told Zane to shut off the electricity, but how was I supposed to get out? I'd have to get out before the sun set, that way I could meet Zane faster. 

Walking over to the door of my cell, I started pounding against it like mad. "There's something really wrong with this guy, he's coughing blood! He's making a mess!" I figured that last part would make it sound like I wasn't really worried about him, just my living space, but I wasn't sure if it sounded stupid. After a moment, it apparently worked.

Another female X5 walked around the corner in the hallway and came up to my door. "What's going on in there?"

I pretended to look disgusted as I glanced back over my shoulder. "He was hacking up blood, didn't you hear? You must not have heard very well, you took so damn long in getting here that he passed out."

I know my attitude was starting to get under her skin, and it took quite a bit of willpower to keep from grinning when she threw open my door, keeping her gun trained on me at all times. She slowly made her way over to the fallen X5 and rolled him onto his back. "There's no blood."

I strode over to my bed and pointed at the wall behind it. "There's a huge spot right over here. You have to get close to see it over the edge of the bed, but it's pretty big."

Still aiming her weapon at me, she walked over to the bed and kneeled on it, looking over to the wall. "I don't see an-" Her words were cut off quickly when I brought my elbow down sharply on the back of her head. She wasn't quite unconscious, so I grabbed her gun and slammed it down on her skull, as close to where I had hit her before as I could. Once I was sure she wouldn't wake up, I studied the gun with distaste. Did I really want to use this? It's not that I'm completely against guns, I'm just not a major fan of them either. _Oh, what the hell. It might come in handy._ I had no sooner thought that as I was turning around than I was thrown against the wall. I kept my hands tightly locked onto the gun, it seemed that it actually _would _come in handy. 

"Did you think you were pretty smart earlier? I underestimated you once, I don't plan on making that mistake again." I'd never heard that voice before, but when I looked up and saw his face, I felt suddenly all too weak. How had he woken up in the past few minutes? The cold hazel eyes of the X5 I had knocked out just glared at me as he crouched down. "You may not be in heat anymore, but I can still finish the job they sent me to do."

Usually I would rather forget that I had ever trained with Zack after the escape, but other times I'm glad of it. This turned out to be one of those times. My first reaction when he leaned over me and reached for my legs was to send a foot straight into his groin. I guess he wasn't expecting that one, his eyes grew as wide as saucers as he lunged backwards. _Thank you, Zack_, I thought with relief as I leapt to my feet. The X5 didn't even have time to react, I simply shot him point blank through the head. I felt myself shudder automatically, I wasn't used to working with guns, but I forced it from my mind. It was almost dark out now, I had other things to worry about. Taking a cautious look around, I ran out the door and headed for the main hall.

*~* Zane

We had found four backup generators during our search, and we already had them divvied up between Syl and Krit. We'd decided that I'd basically go in through the front door and take off for the power room, which I guessed to be somewhere near the middle of the building. Only the tip of the sun was peeking over the horizon now through a haze of thick clouds, so by the time I cut off the power, it would be pitch black out. I was near the front door on the north end of the building, Krit was still on the south, and Syl was on the west side. Once the power was out, Syl would take out the generator on her side, then run up to the north where I was at the moment to knock out the one up here. Krit would handle the south and east.

Everything felt horribly unreal as I darted forward from my position and threw my full weight against the doors. They gave way under the force of my momentum, but they made a devastating crashing noise. I'd have soldiers on top of me any second now. Taking a quick look around, I took off down a side corridor. Hopefully I could reach the control room from a different direction.

The sound of running feet behind me let me know that they had reached the doors. From the sound of the heavy footfalls, they were just normal humans, not X5s. Trying to make as little noise as possible, I followed my corridor to its next intersection and turned left, towards the center of the building. As I passed rooms that looked familiar, I felt an onslaught of memories wash over me. I could feel my legs trembling as I ran, but I forced myself to clear the memories from my head. As soon as my mind was clear, the shaking stopped. 

After about ten minutes, I felt completely lost. I had taken a couple of turns, and now I wasn't even sure which direction I was facing in. I finally felt a little desperation take over, and I started opening the doors of every room I came to. Not the wisest move, I know, but I was getting scared. As I threw open my third door, I noticed something strange about the room. It was practically empty, somewhat resembling a storage room, but there was a large file cabinet in the back. I slid into the room, taking in the bare walls and floors, and made my way over to the cabinet. I grabbed one of the handles and pulled, only to find that the drawer wouldn't open. I tried the next one, same thing. I went back and forth, pulling on every handle until one slid out. It turned out to be empty, but as I reached my hand inside my fingers came across what felt like a ring. I slid my finger into it and pulled, trying to pry it out of the back of the drawer. Instead, I wound up very easily pulling the cabinet away from the wall, revealing the door behind it.

"Not bad," I muttered to myself. "Giant filing cabinets hiding secret doorways; I feel like I've stepped into a spy movie." 

The door refused to open, so I simply did what I did best, I kicked it in. What I saw around me was a mess of computer equipment; some I recognized, some I didn't. My larger problem however was the stunned people that were sitting in their chairs, unable to do anything more than gape at me. I didn't give any of them time to react, I just ran forward and started throwing punches. Every last one of them was a normal person, so my fist ended up knocking them out. I could have laughed at the meek fight they put up, I knew ordinary people with a lot less money that could fight better than them. As soon as I was positive that I was in the clear, I started wandering around looking at the equipment. I'm good with cars, but not computers. I had no clue what to look for.

"You're unwanted here," a cold but familiar voice stated from behind me. I barely had time to see Brin's fierce eyes before I found myself on the floor, sporting a new bruise on my cheek. 

"Then I'll just be going now," I quipped, climbing to my feet slowly with my eyes on her at all times. Her smirk told me what she thought of that. I barely had time to jump as she charged at me, then I had to keep from banging my head on the ceiling. As soon as my feet touched the ground, I spun on my heel and sent a powerful kick into her ribs. She went flying backward and crashed into one of the computers, then probably the luckiest thing I'd ever experienced happened. Something red flashed up on all the other computer screens. EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN. ENTER PASSWORD TO CANCEL. I couldn't help but grin slightly. The computers were set up in a network, if any one of them was disconnected from the network without a password being given, the computers were set to shut down to keep prying eyes from sifting through their files. Even better, the power would be handed over to the backup generators. That was where Syl and Krit came in, and I could go to get Penny.

Brin's wide eyes landed on the message as well, then she threw herself towards the nearest computer. _She knows the password! _I realized with horror. I tackled her from behind, wincing at the elbows I could feel being driven into my sides. I rolled so we were laying side by side, instead of one on top of the other. I didn't want her to be able to use any kind of momentum against me. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out the pain as I distinctly felt one of my ribs crack. As soon as the room went completely black, I let go of her and took off for the door. I came damn close to running into a wall, but the lights turned back on as the generators took over and I managed to avoid it. I hurried back into the hall and turned right, I was almost positive now that this would take me to the main hall. I'd even end up where I was supposed to meet Penny. Maybe things were going my way after all. That was when something hit me from behind.

*~* Penny

I wasn't too far away from my cell when the lights went out. Even though they turned back on only moments later, I felt my heart leap with excitement. I felt so much more at home in the dark, and much more confident about my chances of getting out of this prison. I flattened myself against a doorway until the lights went out again. They came on a few more times, but went out shortly after again. After nearly a full minute of standing in the dark, I was sure that they were out for good and continued on my way. 

It wasn't until I reached the main hall that I heard something. It sounded like a fight of some sort, and someone was losing badly. I made sure there was no possible way I could be heard, and I slid forward until I was practically on top of the struggle. I heard a grunt of pain that was distinctly male, but I couldn't tell who the other person was. There was absolutely no light here, so I couldn't see anything. That's when someone came flying into me. I managed to get out of the way before we hit the wall, but whoever it was now knew that someone else was there.

"Who was that?" came Brin's highly stressed voice. She sounded tired, she must have been fighting for a while. I just held my breath and moved away from her footsteps. 

"Has Manticore turned you completely insane? There's no one here, I would hear them if there was." I felt a rush of relief, it was Zane. The problem was that he sounded like he was in pain. How long had he and Brin been fighting? 

"There _was _someone here, I felt them. They must be standing still and holding their breath." Well, the second idea was true, but the first one couldn't have been more wrong. I was moving nearly nonstop, making sure to avoid her groping arms. After a short time, she finally decided to turn her attention back to Zane. As soon as I knew she was nearly on top of him, I attacked.

It wasn't much of an attack, more like a literal hit and run, but I could tell it had a huge impact on her. Her ear had to be ringing from where I had hit her on the side of the head, not to mention how angry she had to be that I was out of reach and she had no clue where I was. I heard her whirl around, trying to hit me with her arms, then I moved forward again. A swift uppercut to her chin was enough to make her scramble backwards in shock, and a well aimed kick to her knee was more than enough to break it. I had to jump to avoid the kick I could hear coming at me with her good leg, then I kicked her broken leg again. Her yelp of pain let me know that I definitely had the upper hand. 

"Zane, get out of here!" I snapped, avoiding yet another kick from Brin. She was having a difficult time staying on her feet, and I couldn't blame her. Standing on a broken leg had to be tough. Once I was sure that Zane had gone to the end of the hallway, I punched Brin directly in the nose. The only thing I wasn't expecting was for her to grab my arm as she fell, dragging me down with her. This changed things. I couldn't get out of her reach anymore.

"Not bad, _little sister_," she snarled. "But let me see if I can do better." Then she took my arm in both of her hands and started to bend my elbow backward. My other hand shot instinctively to her throat and held on for dear life.

"I swear to God, if you break my arm I will claw your jugular out with my fingernails." I felt her hesitate at that, and I noticed her pulse quicken under my fingers. "Let go of my arm," I growled menacingly. Her grip remained steady for a moment, then she slowly released me. I gathered my legs beneath me, then let go of her throat and ran for the end of the hall. I could sense someone getting ready to attack from ahead of me, but they were obviously hurt. _Zane._

"Couldn't you wait outside?" I snapped breathlessly. He reached out and found my arm in the dark, then nearly collapsed against me. I wrapped one arm around his waist and struggled to hold his weight up, keeping an ear focused behind me to make sure Brin didn't make her way over to us, broken leg or no broken leg.

As Zane and I made it outside, he pointed towards the woods to our right. It seemed that breathing was becoming increasingly difficult for him. Taking a deep breath, I started helping him move as fast as possible towards the woods. He seemed to keep trying to push himself forward, so I guessed that he had some place in mind that he wanted to go. I felt horrible by the time we'd gone two miles through the rough terrain. Why was he pushing himself so hard? He needed to rest somewhere, not keep plowing on like this.

We finally entered a clearing that you could see a highway from. I was ready to let him sit down somewhere so I could see what was wrong, but he feebly pointed his finger towards the highway. "Road," he croaked wearily, pulling his hand back to clutch his chest as he spoke.

"Zane, I'm not sure you can go that far. Why do you want to get there so badly?"

"Krit, Syl," he whispered painfully, still clutching his chest. Realization hit me as he looked slowly at his watch. Krit and Syl were our ride, and there must have been a set time to get to them. At the moment it was 8:50, and I had no clue what time he wanted them to pick us up by. Nevertheless, I forced myself to help him along. It was another quarter of a mile to the road, and it seemed to go slower than anything before. It appeared that the short break we had taken in the clearing had made him more tired.

I finally had to drop Zane into the ditch and crawl up towards the edge of the road, keeping a close eye on the drivers that went past. It had to be nearly quarter after nine when I spotted Krit and Syl coming in Zane's truck from the right. Making sure I wouldn't get hit by any cars, I stepped out onto the road. I could see the relief in Syl's face when she saw me, but the look of worry returned when I gestured toward the ditch. Krit pulled the truck up to the side of the road, then crossed over to me.

"Where's Zane?"

I turned and pointed into the ditch. "He's hurt, it took us forever to get here."

Krit made his way down the steep side of the ditch. "We were worried that you guys had been caught, we'd already come by here once. We must have just missed you."

"Actually, we nearly missed you this time. We probably haven't even been here a minute." I slid down to help him lift Zane up, then we both supported him as we made our way back up to the road. Zane looked blearily around, and Krit forced a joking smile.

"I thought _you_ were supposed to go in there and save _her_. It looks like you got the directions mixed up." Zane forced a weak smile, but it faded off his face almost as soon as it had appeared.

As we pulled Zane into the extended cab of the truck, Syl twisted around in her seat. "What happened to him?"

"He fought with Brin," I replied, positioning myself so Zane could lay down on the seat with his head in my lap. I needed to be able to keep checking his pulse.

"Is she completely part of them now?" Krit asked sadly as he climbed back into the driver's seat.

I nodded distractedly, staring down at Zane. He looked strange. "She did a lot of damage to him." I ran my fingers gently over a deep cut on his left temple, then traced down to his swollen cheek. It wasn't until my hand passed over his lips that I realized something was really wrong. My hand shot to his throat. "Krit, you'd better get us to a hospital as soon as you can. I can't feel a pulse."

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Author's Note: Ok, I figured I'd answer two questions I noticed while I have some time.

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Black Rose: Zack was still with Tinga back at the hotel near LA, but now he's on his way to Manticore.

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me452: Sorry, I don't plan on having Max show up in this story. It's completely separate from her, and I'd like to keep it that way.

Ok, now that that's over with, I'm gonna apologize for taking so damn long while I was writing this chapter. I'm finally driving with my driver's ed teacher, and he's springing different times to drive with me after school, so I'm not home nearly as much. This will be happening a lot for a while, so it's gonna take some time between chapters. Anyways, like always, please review! Just leave me a word, anything! 


	15. Faceoff

Disclaimer: Repeat after me: Dark Angel is the property of James Cameron and the idiots at FOX. Very good.

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Zack's Penny

By Be Boring

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Chapter 13: Face-off

*~* Penny

It felt like every muscle in my body was about to explode. I had been tense ever since we had gotten away from Manticore, it seemed like the truck couldn't go fast enough. Zane's pulse had stopped over five times now, and I knew there were only so many times I'd be able to get it started again before it shut down for good. Our major problem was that it would be stupid to go to a hospital in Gillette or any town near it, but we'd have to get Zane some help soon. His pulse was weak at the moment, and his breathing was so slow that at times I wasn't sure he was breathing at all. 

Krit was driving as fast as he could, but ever since the Pulse there was a lot less traffic on the interstates, leading to more arrests for people that were speeding. There was rarely a crowd you could run in anymore; if you were speeding, then you were alone. So basically, we would go as fast as we could legally until we got behind someone who was really moving, then we went full throttle. 

Syl dug her fingernails into her armrest as she turned to look at Zane's pale and bruised face. "How soon can we get somewhere safe for him?"

Krit glanced at a green sign overhead. "The next exit will take us to Sheridan, so I guess we'll go there. We should be far enough away by now."

Neither one had spoken to me since we'd left, I think they were uncomfortable with the situation. They obviously knew the truth, so I doubt they were very happy with me. Especially seeing as how I had gotten myself caught by Manticore and forced them to come get me, putting them in danger for a person they were already angry with. I hated feeling so awkward around them, especially Syl. She had been like family ever since I had come to live with her, even though she didn't know at the time that I actually _was_ family. She was someone I could turn to, and I sure as hell never took that for granted. Sure, Zack was a good guy and I loved him dearly, but there are some things you just can't tell a man.

I didn't feel even remotely relieved until Krit pulled up next to a hospital, then Syl ran in to get help while Krit and I lifted Zane out of the truck. I could tell by the looks on the faces of the nurses running towards us with a stretcher that they weren't too happy about the way we were moving him. In fact, a shrill voice nearly cut into both Krit and me.

"What in the world do you think you're doing? If this man was an inch from death, you would have killed him by now!" Krit and I could only stand there and blink in shock at the old woman who was chewing us out. I don't think she would have been speaking to us that way if she knew just what kind of people she was dealing with, but then again, she might have gone on with her lecturing anyway. The only thing Krit and I could hear as we walked up to the hospital was her voice babbling about how irresponsible kids were these days. Syl raised an eyebrow as we finally reached her, but Krit just rolled his eyes in response. I couldn't help but grin at the way they could communicate perfectly without saying a word. I hoped I could have that with someone someday.

*~* Zane

Images kept flashing through my mind; some in slow motion, some whipping by so fast that I couldn't tell what I had just seen. An image of a very angry young Max melted perfectly into an outraged older Zack, then changed smoothly once again into a laughing Syl. Lydecker became Krit, Randy became one of my dogs. It was like watching some sort of insane slideshow. I vaguely remembered opening my eyes and seeing Penny, but I couldn't seem to get her attention. She was looking forward through the windshield. I could see the back of Krit's head, and the scent of Syl's perfume was almost overwhelming. Before anyone looked at me, everything had faded to black again.

My world went back to the strange slideshow presentation. Sounds could be vaguely heard, often connected to the image I was seeing. I saw one of my old girlfriends while the song "Breathe" by Faith Hill played in my mind, but it changed almost immediately to a fourteen-year-old Jondy, head banging to "It's My Life" by Bon Jovi. I heard Penny's scream as I slammed on the brakes on the day of her accident, but it turned into a very drunk young Krit doing his Whitney Houston impression. I was fairly sure he was attempting to sing "I Will Always Love You", but I might have confused that with the sound of something dying. 

__

This has got to stop. Something in me didn't like this roller coaster ride that my mind was sending me on, but I couldn't do much about it. The more I wished for it to go away, the faster it came. _Is this what they mean by your life flashing before your eyes? _Jondy had always believed that particular theory, so she decided she wanted to make her last moments interesting. She liked to live her life as wildly as possible, and her only excuse was "When I die, I want the last things I see to be interesting, not make me want to die faster!" 

Zack had never liked for any of us to talk about death so casually. I think it worried him to think about any of us dying. He wanted to feel as though he'd succeeded as a leader, not failed us miserably. His one minor setback was that he never expected us to do something he wouldn't normally do. Like Penny; his normal reaction would have been to get out of the country, but she had gone even closer to Manticore. That threw him for a loop because he believed we should all be like him. I respected him deeply, but I didn't ever want to become quite that boring.

__

"Get out! Get the fuck out of here! Leave me alone!" Now I could see Penny trying to back away from me. It was the shower from the hotel in Ludlow, and I was fighting with my body as I tried to get nearer to that enticing smell. The cold water and the pain in my nose didn't even slow me down as I reached for her. I remember feeling a rush of relief when she shoved me under the cold water and ran out of the shower stall. It was a relief not to be near her, where her scent made me unable to control myself. _Why did any of it have to happen? She'll never trust me again. It doesn't matter whether or not I succeeded in getting her out of Manticore, she'll never feel right when she's near me again._

The only hope I had was that tiny moment where I had opened my eyes. I was sure that it was real, but could I trust my own crazed mind? Or was it all an illusion? Maybe we didn't make it after all, perhaps we got caught and I'm in a drug-induced coma. My only glimmer of hope was that one moment. I could only pray that it was real.

*~* Penny

They had been working on Zane for nearly two hours now. According to one of the nurses, he had a broken arm, five cracked ribs, a punctured lung, a dislocated shoulder, and a severe concussion. _Why did I take so long in getting to him? I might have been able to stop him from getting hurt so badly!_

Krit and Syl were sitting together a couple seats away from me, but they hadn't so much as glanced at me during all this time. I've never felt more helpless and alone. I didn't even bother to say anything to them as I stood up and walked off. I needed to take a walk and just move my body. Some food would be welcome as well, but I remembered just how horrible hospital food could be. Maybe I would pass on that for a while. 

"Penny? Is that you?"

I whirled around, feeling every muscle tense up once again, this time for defense, but a moment later I relaxed. 

"Tinga? Is Zack here too?"

She looked so happy to see me, it was a complete 180 from the way she had been treating me in her car. "Yeah, he'll be coming soon. You're not going to be able to stay here long, it's too easy to find you. You know that Zack has a police scanner, and we heard at least fifteen reports of a blue truck speeding on the interstate, but you weren't going quite fast enough for them to decide to come and pick you up. The reports stopped after you exited and came to Sheridan, so we started searching the town. I'm sure he'll stop in here pretty soon. Why are you here?"

"Zane fought with Brin while he was trying to get me out of Manticore. She beat him up pretty badly, he was lucky to survive."

"So Zane wasn't kidding when he said you had been captured? Zack thought he just said that to piss him off."

"He was being perfectly serious," I replied quietly. I hadn't realized how tired this entire ordeal had made me, and I simply didn't have the energy to deal with Tinga, especially if she was going to get nasty.

But for some reason, she didn't look as though she was trying to pick a fight. "Are you okay? You look exhausted."

I tried to force a smile. "It's just been a really long day."

She glanced around and pulled me to one of the waiting chairs. "C'mon, sit down. You'll probably want to be somewhat rested up when Zack shows up."

So that's what she was worried about; Zack. I could still sense the hostility she felt towards me, but she was keeping it in check because of him. With what she had done to me last time, he most likely wasn't too happy with her. No matter what her reasons were for being nice, I was grateful. I'd felt lonely for the past few hours, so it was nice to have someone to talk to.

"How does Zack feel about everything that's happened?" I asked finally.

She shrugged. "I don't have a clue. You know the way he can be, he just won't let anyone see what's going on in his head. Just as a guess though, I think he's more worried than angry. It's hard to tell though, he expresses both of those feelings in the exact same way."

"Tell me about it. I lived with him for years and I still didn't get him figured out."

For some reason, Tinga gave me a strange look. "You say all of that in the past tense. Aren't you going to go back to living with him?"

I was dumbstruck for a moment, I really had sounded as if I didn't plan on living with Zack again. Maybe I didn't want to. "I don't know. It's been a while since I lived with him, and I'm more capable of taking care of myself now."

She hesitated for a moment, then plunged into her next question. I could tell it wasn't easy for her to ask. "Are you planning to live with Zane?"

That took me completely by surprise. I hadn't even thought of it before, my initial ideas were to leave everyone behind and start fresh. "To be honest, I never considered that. I don't really know what I feel now after my heat cycle and everything that's happened, and I don't know how Zane feels about me."

"He came straight into Manticore to save you, doesn't that tell you something?" 

I knew that had to be hard for her to say, she didn't like me enough to want me to be with her brother. "Yeah, I guess so. Maybe I'll talk to him after he wakes up."

"No, I don't think you will be talking to him anytime soon."

Tinga and I both turned. Zack had finally made it to the hospital, and he looked furious. "Why would you say that? What's going to stop me from talking to him?"

His blue eyes flashed while he ran his fingers back through his hair. "You're not going to be here when he wakes up. We're leaving right now."

Despite my weariness, I jumped to my feet. "What makes you think you're taking me anywhere? If I don't plan on going, then good luck getting me out of here!"

I think that hit him hard, he had expected me to fall into line like the good little soldier he wanted me to be. "What'll you do if I'm not here? How long would it be before you got captured by Manticore again? I wouldn't be around to save you."

"You weren't around to save me this time, why wouldn't I be able to get out a second time?" That obviously hurt him, but I was too deep into this to stop now. "I don't know what I'm going to do yet, but I might not be living alone. Would that make you feel better?"

"It depends on who you're thinking of living with." He apparently hadn't heard what I'd said just before I mentioned wanting to talk to Zane.

"I'll let you know later. If you really want to find out, then you can stick around and wait, or you can leave and I'll call you later. Either way, I don't think I'll be living with you again." There, I had it out, everything was said. Now I hoped he could deal with it. He probably would have shot something back, but a doctor came up to me at that moment.

"There's someone who wants to see you."

*~* Zane

The first thing I saw when I woke up was a white ceiling. _Manticore got to us, _was the first thought that ran through my mind, but when I lifted my head I could see people running up and down the hallway. This didn't seem to be Manticore, it just looked like your everyday hospital.

"How are you feeling?" A young woman who probably hadn't been a doctor for more than a year came walking to my side. "Any pain?"

I glanced down at my body, stunned to see the casts that covered a lot of it. "No, not really, I just feel lightheaded."

"That's the aftereffects of the anesthesia we had to use. As a matter of fact, we had to use a lot of it on you to make sure you wouldn't be waking up in the middle of our work, you just didn't seem to want to stay asleep."

I was surprised they had enough anesthesia here to make an X5 sleep. "Who brought me here?"

"Two young women and a young man," she replied matter-of-factly. _Thank God, the plan worked._

"Can I speak to one of the young women? She's the shorter of the two, and she has curly, light brown hair."

"Would you like me to inform the other two that you're awake?"

"Not quite yet, I want to speak to Penny first." I couldn't help but feel stupid after she left the room, I had used Penny's name. I hoped we weren't too close to Manticore, just a whisper of her name could bring them back down on top of us.

About five minutes later, I couldn't help but smile as Penny entered the room. She looked worried. "How are you? From everything the doctor told me, you have enough injuries to top a war veteran!"

I started to laugh, but my ribs immediately protested. I took as deep of a breath as I could without hurting myself, then started letting the questions flow. "Where are we? Manticore doesn't know where we are, do they? Are you okay? Where's Krit and Syl?"

She chuckled and motioned for me to stop talking. "Just one at a time! We're in Sheridan, Wyoming, I don't think Manticore knows our whereabouts, I'm just fine, and Krit and Syl are out in the waiting room hoping to see you soon. Does that help?"

"A little. Penny, how are you _really_? I don't mean physically."

I saw her tense up slightly. "Are you talking about..." She trailed off uncomfortably.

"Yeah, I've been worried ever since you left Ludlow. I don't want what happened to change anything between us, and I especially don't want it to make us feel uncomfortable around each other."

"I don't think that can be helped, but I want to get over it. I have other things on my mind right now."

"Like what?"

"Zack's out there right now, and he's really pissed. I told him that I didn't want to live with him anymore."

That was news to me. "Really? What are you planning to do?"

"I'm not sure yet. I'll think of somewhere to live later, right now I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

I wasn't sure if I could sense something from her body language that meant this was a hint, but I decided to take it anyway. It was probably one of the riskiest things I've ever done, and I'm saying that even after I ran into Manticore and got my ass kicked. "I think I know what the answer to this is going to be, but would you ever consider living with me? Zack wouldn't be happy, and it would probably be really uncomfortable for a little while, but would you think about it?"

The room was silent for a few minutes while she stared at the floor, obviously thinking hard. I was dreading her answer, but she surprised me. "I'll think about it."

I couldn't help it, I reached over and gave her hand a squeeze. I couldn't really express how excited I was, but I never got my chance.

"There's no way in hell," a low growl came from behind Penny. We both stared at the door, and the man filling it up. I should have guessed Zack wouldn't be happy about this.

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Author's Note: I'm so sorry this took so long! I had a horrible case of writer's block, and I wanted to make this chapter as good as possible for everyone. Just to let everyone know, I'll be wrapping this story up in one or two more chapters. This is one I'll really miss writing, especially seeing as how I've never gotten so much positive feedback on a story before. I thank you guys from the bottom of my heart, it really cheers me up to read your reviews. So please press the little button and leave me a tidbit!


	16. Farewells

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters except for Penny.

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Zack's Penny

By Be Boring

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Chapter 14: Farewells

*~* Zane

I'm not sure I've ever seen Zack any angrier than he was while he was standing in that doorway. I think anyone but an X5 would have run from the room pissing their pants at the mere sight of him, and that was without knowing what he was capable of. His eyes looked like they could shoot fire, and I could almost feel the flames while his gaze rested on me. 

"There's no way I'm letting you two live together. It's bad enough that Syl and Krit constantly compromise us, I'm not about to let you two start in on it."

I couldn't help but think that that was a little unfair, we hadn't done anything so far to really get us in trouble, and the one time we had it had been partly his fault. If he hadn't interrupted us, we might have at least stayed in that hotel room for the rest of her heat cycle. Besides, we were sensible enough to not let anything like our last disaster happen again.

Apparently Penny was thinking along the same lines as me. "Zane and I are _nothing_ like Krit and Syl, and you know it! Do you really think that we would go out and get ourselves caught? We'd be as careful as humanly possible."

"_Humanly_ isn't good enough," he growled.

"It's just an expression, don't turn into an asshole on me now," she replied just as fiercely. It was amazing how she could match him glare for glare in an argument. Perhaps it would be better for me to just let her handle this situation, she had a much better relationship with our family monster.

"It's not being an asshole, it's being technical, which is what you could use! Some logical thinking wouldn't hurt you at all."

Now that confused me. Penny was as level-headed of a person as you're likely to meet these days. This was one point where I couldn't keep my mouth shut. "Aren't you going a bit too far? She hasn't done anything wrong, she just wants to make a life of her own. I don't see why you're making this so difficult." 

For some reason this placed a thoughtful look on Penny's face. "Yeah Zack, why _are_ you making this so difficult?"

He took a deep breath and rolled his eyes. "I don't mind you wanting a life of your own, but will it really be like that if you're living with him? You won't be able to make all of your own decisions."

"At least I'll get to make some of them," she snapped. That obviously took him by surprise, I doubt he'd ever pictured himself as a person who doesn't give out much of a leash. He looked uncertain for a moment, then he backed out of the room and stalked off. I knew he wasn't leaving this alone, he just wanted to blow off some steam. 

I reached up and touched Penny's shoulder, which was shaking slightly in anger. "You know the real reason he's acting like this, don't you?"

She sighed and nodded. "Yeah, I do. He's been protecting me for practically my entire life, and now I want to go with someone else. I know there's no romantic feelings there, but he still feels like he's lost me to you."

"I guess it's kind of how a father feels when his daughter gets married. You're not going to be under his protection anymore, you'll be putting your life in someone else's hands."

She smiled ruefully. "Maybe that should be the other way around. I seem to remember that it wasn't me who came out of Manticore looking like a living bruise. In fact, I'm the only reason you're living at all."

I tried to pull myself up into a more dignified position. "I wouldn't say _that _exactly, I like to think that I would have been able to get away from Brin without your help."

She smirked playfully. "Keep on thinking that if it helps you sleep better. Seriously though, I should probably go talk to Zack. I don't want to end this with bad feelings between us. Besides, it's not like I'll be leaving him forever. I'm sure he'll be checking in every other week."

As she left the room, I couldn't help but feel a ripple of pleasure at the thought that she wanted to live with me. It wasn't for sure yet, but she seemed to be more open to the idea of it now. In all honesty, I cared a lot about her. She just had something about her that tugged at my heart. At least now it was all in the open, I just hoped she could get Zack's approval.

*~* Penny

Just by looking at Zack's back, I could tell he was spitting fire. I appreciated his love, but as I've said before, he loves too much. Did he really think that I would live with him forever? That wasn't even feasible. I had to get out on my own someday, why not now? Someone would think that he'd be happy I wouldn't be completely alone, at least I would have someone dependable with me. 

I reached out and gripped his arm gently. I felt him stiffen at my touch, but after a slight squeeze he gave in and turned around. "I know what you're going to say, and I don't want to hear it."

I smiled warmly. "I love you, big brother." With that said, I stepped forward and dragged him into a hug. He was frozen in place for a moment, but then he grudgingly returned my embrace.

"Okay, so maybe that's not what I was expecting, but I don't want to hear the rest," he grumbled, but I could tell I had softened him a little. I was one of the few people with that talent.

"I know you're not happy about this, but short of knocking me out and locking me up for the rest of my natural life, you're not going to stop me and you know it."

He stepped back from the hug rather sharply, but his eyes didn't look angry. If anything, he just looked tired. "I know, you lived with me for way too long to just give in." Even though it didn't come out, I could see a tiny smile pulling at the corners of his lips.

"I'll get a cell phone that only you'll know the number to, and you can call me every day on it. Not to mention that I'm sure you'll be making a lot of personal visits."

He seemed to bristle a bit, but then changed his mind. "You know I don't like this. I would feel better if you were alone, at least then Manticore would be less likely to find you. You've seen how dangerous it is for Syl and Krit to live together."

"Like I said before, Zane and I are a completely different story. We're not going to be living right in the open." I hadn't noticed it while I was talking, but after I'd finished I realized that I had pretty much set my heart on living with Zane. It actually came as something of a surprise to me. 

He frowned and cracked his knuckles. "I know, and I can see your point, but that doesn't mean I have to like it."

"You're right, it doesn't, but it still doesn't change a thing. You shouldn't have raised me, you've created a monster," I teased playfully. At that, he finally had to allow himself to smile a little. Then, he took on his C.O. face.

"There's a place in Eau Claire, Wisconsin that can keep you somewhat out of sight. So far none of us have really gone into Wisconsin, so hopefully that will put you far enough away from their eyes that they won't notice you living there. It's not a tiny city, so it's not like you'll have to travel a long distance just to have some fun. It's probably just what you would look for if I let you choose where to live."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "Does that mean you'll let us...?"

He groaned and rolled his eyes. "Yeah, you and Zane can live together. But--" He was cut off as I threw my arms around him and squeezed him as tightly as I could. He grunted uncomfortably, then managed to continue, having to struggle for every breath. "Don't...get...into...trouble." He finally managed to get it all out.

"Don't worry, we'll be good little soldiers," I teased as I stepped back and ruffled his hair. He swatted my hand away and reached up to smooth his hair back down, but by the time he had returned his hand to his side, I was already gone.

Zane nearly jumped out of his several casts as I came back into the room. Something about the look on my face must have given away the results of my conversation with Zack, because a smile broke out on his handsome face. "I take it you had a good talk?"

I pretended to look upset. "It went alright, but there's only one tiny problem. How much do you like Wisconsin?" I couldn't keep a straight face after his eyes lit up. He threw a pillow at me, rolling his eyes the entire time.

"Don't give me a scare like that again! Does that mean you agreed to my little proposal?"

"Yeah, I guess that's what it means. As long as you haven't changed your mind, that is."

His eyes widened. "Change my mind? Are you nuts? You're stuck with me, and there's no way in hell you're getting rid of me."

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 1 week later ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

*~* Penny

I grunted as I heaved the last of the boxes into the two-floor house Zack had bought for us at the edge of Eau Claire. _I had no idea I ever owned this much stuff,_ I thought grouchily. My whole body was sore from dragging box after box up into my bedroom. Zane and I had agreed to start out with two bedrooms and just live as friends for a while, but I had the feeling that it wouldn't last long. There had been no intimacy between the two of us since the kiss through the bars at Manticore, but that's because I wanted him to be completely healed before anything happened. As it was, Zack, Tinga, and I were carrying everything into the house while we forced Zane to sit on our new couch in the living room. It was strange to have such a big place, I was much more adjusted to apartments and hotel rooms. 

Zane wasn't too happy about sitting in one place, but it wasn't like he could help much. His ribs still hurt him, and his arm wasn't good for lifting very much weight. Also, his lung hadn't quite healed, so he needed to keep his breathing steady. Of course, the doctors didn't know that his lung would fix itself in a matter of days. In about another week he'd be practically normal.

"Do I get to do anything?" Zane grumbled from his spot. 

Zack tossed over a few papers. "Fill these out. They're applications for jobs for both you and Penny."

As he set to work on that, Zack pulled me outside. I didn't quite understand why, we'd already gotten all of the boxes, but then he surprised me by wrapping his arms around me. He was planning on saying goodbye.

"Just keep your head down, kiddo. You got that?"

I tilted my head back and smiled up at him. "You can count on me."

He chuckled and gestured with his head towards the house. "It's not you I'm worried about."

I glanced over my shoulder at my new home. "Don't worry, I'll keep him in line. Where are you going next?"

"I'm taking Tinga into Canada, I'll have to keep an eye on her there. You know as well as I do that as soon as my back is turned, she'll be out the door."

"She has a family, I wouldn't blame her for leaving you stranded somewhere."

He sighed and kissed my forehead. "Let me deal with her, you just worry about getting started on your new life. It'll be strange not to have you sleeping in the next bed in the middle of the night."

I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the cell phone we had bought the day before. "If you have any more dreams about Eva, just give me a call. I want to be number one on your speed dial, okay? That way if you ever need your little personal night-goggles, you know how to reach me."

He smiled gently and gave me another squeeze. "What do you think I should do whenever I get the chance to actually be alone?"

I grinned against his chest. "Get yourself a girlfriend." I ducked the half-hearted punch he aimed at my head and burst out laughing. 

He couldn't help but grin back at me. "Maybe I'll do that."

I had to go just a bit further, this would be the last chance in a long time that I would have to tease him face to face. "Let me guess. She'll be about 5'7", with dark, curly brown hair, big brown eyes, big pouty lips, and a kick-ass attitude." This time I had to take off running as he lunged at me. We were still playing around when Tinga came back out of the house.

"And here I thought I was leaving a little boy behind," she quipped, laughing at our antics.

I stepped far out of Zack's reach and gave Tinga a wink. "Little? Zack's not little by any means. Not physically anyway."

We both laughed as Zack made a gesture with his arms as if to say "Why do I bother" before he climbed into the car. "Are we ready to go?"

Tinga nodded. "As ready as I'll ever be." She turned to me nervously. "I know I've been a bitch, but good luck. I mean that." She gave me a pat on the arm as she passed, which would probably be the most affectionate gesture I'd ever get out of her, but it meant a lot. We didn't like each other, but at least now things were tolerable. 

*~* Zane

I could see tears threatening to come out of Penny as she came back into the house. I had seen the car leave, so I knew she must be feeling a little lonely. Zack had been there for her for so long, after all. I made my way over to where she was, walked up behind her, and placed a gentle kiss on her temple while wrapping my arms around her shoulders.

"He'll never be that far away, especially when it comes to you. Will you be okay?"

She took a deep breath and nodded. "I'll be fine, but I think I'm going to take a shower. It might help me clear my head."

I walked into the kitchen and pulled out a can of soda from the refrigerator, but I never got my chance to open it. A sleek black car pulled up outside our house and two masked figures stepped out. I automatically went to Penny's purse and pulled out her gun, ready to fire at any moment. I could hear the strangers picking the lock on the door, but I never got my chance to fire.

"Heelllloooooo!" a cocky male voice called out from the front hallway. My mouth dropped open.

"Krit?"

The grin on my brother's face as he sauntered into the kitchen almost made me want to really fire my gun. He had almost given me a heart attack!

"You're looking good! I didn't think you would have recovered so quickly." Syl stepped out from behind Krit, studying me the entire time.

I tossed the gun onto the kitchen table and let her hug me. "I'm not quite done yet, but my casts are off. How did you know where we were?"

She grinned up at me. "I overheard Zack telling Penny where he'd found a place for you to live, so we pretty much just found out from the real estate agency where the most recently sold houses were. It didn't take too much to find you."

We were all sitting on the living room floor and chatting when Penny came down in her bathrobe and nearly jumped out of her skin. Then, a grin broke out on her face. "It doesn't take you long to do much of anything, does it?"

Krit gave his cheeky grin. "You know it. Sit down, join the circle."

I couldn't help but feel a huge burst of relief as Penny lowered herself down to the floor. She had told me about talking to Syl and Krit a couple of times while I was in the hospital, but I hadn't realized they had patched things up completely. Apparently it came as a shock to her too, from the look of delight on her face at Krit's invitation. Then again, it didn't surprise me so much. There was just something about her that no one could put their finger on. 

Her name matched her perfectly. A penny is not something you really think about, even if it's always there. But when there comes that time that you need just that little extra bit, it's always right there for you. I wouldn't have it any other way.

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The End

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Author's note: Normally I don't put 'the End' on stories, but for some reason I decided to put it on this time. I had planned on doing two more chapters on this, but once I started writing, I realized that this would be the final one. Unless you wanted to read two itsy-bitsy chapters, but I didn't want to do that. I'm sorry I took so long! I just couldn't seem to get past a horrible case of writer's block. I just stared at my cursor on the screen and went "uuuuuhhhhhhh" so I couldn't really pop out anything suitable to post on the site. Like always, leave at least a word by pressing that nice little button down there!


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